How to serialize back a ConfigurationElement object?

Question

Hello

In the System.Configuration namespace you have several classes (like ConfigurationElement) which help you to deserialize custom configuration sections into objects.

Now I have an object from a class which derives from ConfigurationElement and I'd like to serialize it back into its original xml state because I'd like to write it to a trace output (XmlWriterTraceListener). I tried to use the XmlSerializer to serialize the object but this did not work. I got the following error:

You must implement a default accessor on "MyProperty" because
it inherits from ICollection.

Any other ideas how to achieve this? The framework already has a builtin mechanism to deserialize the custom config section. Maybe it's somehow possible to use the same mechanism to serialize the object again?

Any help is appreciated.

Kind regards

Answer 1

Use the property/method

SectionInformation.GetRawXml

of your ConfigurationSection instance.

 

Answer 2

Thank you for your suggestion. I tried this:

object section = ConfigurationManager.GetSection("MySection");
ConfigurationSection configurationSection;
string xml;

if(section is ConfigurationSection)
{
  configurationSection = (ConfigurationSection)section;
  xml = configurationSection.SectionInformation.GetRawXml();
}

But the GetRawXml method threw the following exception:

InvalidOperationException: "This operation does not apply at runtime."

Any ideas?

Answer 3

Ok, it worked like this:

ExeConfigurationFileMap fileMap = new ExeConfigurationFileMap();

fileMap.ExeConfigFilename = "MyApp.exe.config";

System.Configuration.Configuration config = ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedExeConfiguration(fileMap, ConfigurationUserLevel.None);

object section = config.GetSection("MySection");

ConfigurationSection configurationSection;

string xml;

if(section is ConfigurationSection)

{

configurationSection = (ConfigurationSection)section;

xml = configurationSection.SectionInformation.GetRawXml();

}

Answer 4

Exactly! Perfect :)

Answer 5

Thanks very useful

Answer 6

How to deserialize raw XML back to ConfigurationElement?

Thanks,
Jay