Serialize to XML - private properties

Question

I\'m looking for a way to serialize a POCO that contains some read-only properties. In some Google and StackOverflow searches, I\'ve seen the following suggestions:

Answer 1

Well, normally XmlSerializer can't serialize read-only properties... however there is a possibility to serialize properties with an internal set : you need to generate the XML serialization assembly, and declare it as a "friend" assembly using the InternalsVisibleTo attribute. You can automate this by adding the following code to your project file :

And in AssemblyInfo.cs :

[assembly: InternalsVisibleTo("MyAssembly.XmlSerializers")]

Of course, you might not want the properties to have an internal set, but if you do, the solution above should work.