This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Scott Hanselman. Original Post: HOW TO: Debug into a .NET XmlSerializer Generated Assembly Feed Title: Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com Feed URL: http://radio-weblogs.com/0106747/rss.xml Feed Description: Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com is a .NET/WebServices/XML Weblog. I offer details of obscurities (internals of ASP.NET, WebServices, XML, etc) and best practices from real world scenarios. Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Scott Hanselman Latest Posts From Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com

The XmlSerializer is a much maligned piece of software, but I have to tell you, it's the bomb.  We use it a lot here at Corillian. Recently we had to debug a pretty funky problem where an enum was writing out to an XML file, but wasn't reading back in. We suspected it was a namespace thing, but the XmlSerializer is such a black box, a lot of people really have trouble dealing with it. It inspires a trial-and-error style, while I prefer to debug and step around myself.

Here's how to debug into a generated assembly from the XmlSerializer.

1. Given an application like:

using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;

namespace Foo
{
    public class Bar
    {
        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            XmlSerializer x = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Person));
            Person p = new Person();
            p.first = "Scott";
            p.last = "Hanselman";
            x.Serialize(new StreamWriter("foo.xml"),p);
        }
    }

    public class Person
    {
        public string first;
        public string last;
    }
}

2. Create a yourapplication.exe.config like this:

<? xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
   <system.diagnostics>
      <switches>
         <add name="XmlSerialization.Compilation" value="1" />
      </switches>
   </system.diagnostics>
</configuration>>

3. Compile and run and step up to the line where the XmlSerializer is constructed, and step over that line.

4. Go to c:\documents and settings\[username]\local settings\temp and look at the most recently created *.cs file. Open that file, it will have a name like asdasdfs.0.cs. Note that there are *.pdbs in that folder as well.

5. Set a breakpoint anywhere in that generated file.

6. Debug to taste (see screenshot below)