Comments by Member 13348717 (Top 5 by date)

Has been interesting following this conversation. My initial requirement was just serialization and I chose XML because it seemed easiest but I will also have a need for JSON ( I think as the project will move forward with a web data requirement as well ). All this of course means I need to do a lot more reading

I need access to the class 2 instances. I really only need access to the ID members for serialization purposes. The issue is that the ID properties have t be public to be serialized meaning I have to have both the instance and the separate property declared as public.

Thanks Bill,

Unless I am missing something, this approach then introduces a problem with keeping the ID and object list in sync

Both lists must be exposed publicly to allow access to the member lists. the List<class2> property for access to the actual data and List<class2id> property so that the ID lists gets serialized. Although there may be a separate public method that add new or existing Class2 objects as list members under Class1, there is nothing to prevent developers (either purposely or mistakenly) from adding items to 1 of these lists independently which will then throw the lists (and subsequent serialization) out of sync. I tried adding code originally to sync the ID list with the object list and tag it with the [OnSerialized] attribute but it never fired. I could also place code within the Serialize method to sync these properties but in the real world application (not just the example above) this involves numerous nested iteration loops to achieve this syncing.

Of course nested iterations must then be performed to resync the object lists with the deserialized ID lists once the XML has been deserialized.

Thanks Graeme for the detailed response and the references. I am picking through it now to try to adapt it to meet requirements.

The issue I have is with the Material member property object, bnot the root Categoty class. When the Category objects get serialized, the Categories[x].Items[y].Materials list members that get serialized are the ones that I need just the ID, not the full Material class object.

I have edited the original question to show the XML I was getting with the original code and also what I am trying to achieve. I am trying to adapt your solution from working on a root object ( Category ) the a member property within a list item ( Category[x].Items[y].Material ) but not entirely sure how to make this work on a member rather than the root class.