Set DataContract and DataMember Without All the Attributes

Question

I find the [DataContract] and [DataMember] attributes a bit messy and would rather do this with code in a config method or something. Is this possible?

Answer 1

You don't have to use these attributes at all. DataContractSerializer will serialize all public properties with getter and setter but in case of serializing entities with navigation properties you will easily end with exception due to "cyclic reference".

To avoid that exception you must either use [DataContract(IsReference = true)] on your entity class with DataMember on every property you want to serilize or IgnoreDataMember on every property you don't want to serialize.

The last and the most complex option is avoiding attributes completely and custom classes implementing IDataContractSurrogate to control serialization outside of the type.

You can also write your completely custom serialization process or use XML serialization or binary serialization with all its requirements.