I want to force the NetDataContractSerializer to write property values in a specific order, because the serializer writes them in an alphabetic order.
I know I can achieve this by adding [DataMember(Order = X)] attributes to these properties but this works only when I add [DataContract] attribute to the class I am serializing.
Unfortunately, I can't add the [DataContract] attribute to this class since its base class doesn't have one.
Is there another way to force the order?
I've came up with the idea of using own ISerializationSurrogate where I can handle getting the properties that are being serialized myself.
private class MySerializationSurrogate<T> : ISerializationSurrogate { private IEnumerable<DataMemberAttribute> GetXmlAttribs(PropertyInfo p) => p.GetCustomAttributes(false).OfType<DataMemberAttribute>(); public void GetObjectData(Object obj, SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) { var myobj = (T)obj; foreach (var property in myobj.GetType().GetProperties().Where(p => GetXmlAttribs(p).Any()).OrderBy(p => GetXmlAttribs(p).First().Order)) { info.AddValue(property.Name, property.GetValue(myobj)); } } public Object SetObjectData(Object obj, SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context, ISurrogateSelector selector) { var myobj = (T)obj; foreach (var property in myobj.GetType().GetProperties().Where(p => GetXmlAttribs(p).Any()).OrderBy(p => GetXmlAttribs(p).First().Order)) { property.SetValue(myobj, info.GetValue(property.Name, property.PropertyType)); } return null; } } Then I assign the serialization surrogate to the serializer.
var formatter = new NetDataContractSerializer(); var surrogateSelector = new SurrogateSelector(); surrogateSelector.AddSurrogate(typeof(T), new StreamingContext(StreamingContextStates.All), new MySerializationSurrogate<T>()); formatter.SurrogateSelector = surrogateSelector; And everything works like hell.
NOTE that T is the type of the object being serialized/deserialized.