XmlSerializer and IXmlSerializable: automatic XSD validation please!
The IXmlSerializable interface allows you to take full control of the XML serialization of your class whenever the XmlSerializer is used. It will check for this interface, and if it finds it, it will use its methods for the serialization, instead of reading the serialization attributes, etc. The interface has the following definition:
`
public interface IXmlSerializable
{
XmlSchema GetSchema();
void ReadXml(XmlReader reader);
void WriteXml(XmlWriter writer);
}
`
Having the GetSchema method, you would think it performs automatic XSD validation of incoming XML, right? That the XmlReader passed to the ReadXml method is actually an instance of XmlValidatingReader created automatically by the serializer when it detects you implement IXmlSerializable, right? WRONG. It doesn’t.
Basically the schema is retrieved at the initial temporary assembly generation step (explained in a previous post), for reasons I still couldn’t find. But it’s not used whatsoever after that. Why?
The XmlSerializer constructor takes an XmlReader, TextReader or Stream. It would be all too easy to wrap them with an XmlValidatingReader before deserializing the object. Think that the schema you have to return from the GetSchema method can be taken from an embedded resource…
I think this would be a great addition to Whidbey.
/kzu
/kzu dev↻d