How to serialize/deserialze a class that implements IEnumerator, IEnumerable?

Question

Just want to stress out this question is irrelevant of why this technology and why not that. This is related to C# code.

I searched below but none provides solution.

Serialize a class that implements IEnumerable

Serialization on classes that implement IEnumerator

I am working on WCF Rest project in C# which is replacing .NET Remoting communication layer. I use Newtonsoft dll to serialize and de-serialize.

I have a class called MyDTO which implements IEnumerator, IEnumerable which I cannot change since this is old class and many applications in production use them. When I try to serialize MyDTO into string I do not get any error/exception message, I just get an empty array like "[]". Can anybody tell how we can serialize/deserialze class that implements IEnumerator, IEnumerable?

public class MyDTO : IEnumerator, IEnumerable

I am calling a method called ABC in OldServer.dll which gives me MyDTO object. I want to convert this to string and again from string to MyDTO.

Please let me know if you need more information. Please see below for MyDTO class which I cannot change:

[Serializable]
public class MyDTO : IEnumerator, IEnumerable
{
    #region Inner Types

    internal class MyObjComparer : IComparer<MyObj>
    {
        public int Compare(MyObj x, MyObj y)
        {
            return x.InputCode.CompareTo(y.InputCode);
        }
    }
    #endregion

    #region Variables

    private List<MyObj> myObjList;
    private string selectedObjectMessage;

    private bool containSequenceNo = false;

    private bool sortEnabled;
    private bool filterEnabled;
    private IComparer<MyObj> objectComparer;
    #endregion

    #region Constructors

    public MyDTO()
    {
        this.myObjList = new List<MyObj>();
        this.selectedObjectMessage = string.Empty;
    }

    public MyDTO(List<MyObj> objects)
    {
        this.myObjList = objects;
        this.selectedObjectMessage = string.Empty;
    }

    public MyDTO(IComparer<MyObj> argSortComparer)
        : this()
    {
        this.objectComparer = argSortComparer;
    }

    public MyDTO(List<MyObj> argErrors, IComparer<MyObj> argSortComparer)
        : this(argErrors)
    {
        this.objectComparer = argSortComparer;
    }

    public MyDTO(List<MyObj> argErrors, IComparer<MyObj> argSortComparer, bool argSortEnabled)
        : this(argErrors, argSortComparer)
    {
        this.sortEnabled = argSortEnabled;
    }

    #endregion

    #region Properties

    public string selectedObjectMessage
    {
        get { return this.selectedObjectMessage; }
        set
        {
            if (value == null)
                value = string.Empty;

            this.selectedObjectMessage = value;
        }
    }

    public int Count
    {
        get { return this.myObjList.Count; }
    }

    public bool ErrorsContainsSequenceNo
    {
        get { return this.containSequenceNo; }
        set { this.containSequenceNo = value; }
    }

    public List<MyObj> myObjList            
    {                                          
        get { return this.myObjList; }         
        set { this.myObjList = value; } 
    }     

    public MyDTO WithoutEmptyMyObjects
    {
        get
        {
            MyDTO objs = new MyDTO();

            foreach (MyObj obj in this.myObjList)
            {
                if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(obj.InputCode))
                    objs.Add(obj);
            }
            return objs;
        }
    }
    #endregion
}

UPDATE 1:

After spending almost a day we decided to write our own method targeting MyDTO which will produce XmlDocument which is serialize. Using that same XmlDocument we will try create MyDTO object. I feel we need to just concentrate on properties that has setters. I will let you know.

Answer 1

Using the almighty Json.Net

1) Create a contract resolver to serialize/deserialize specific members based on their accessibility, cause by default serialization/deserialization only happens for public members.

public class MyContractResolver : Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.DefaultContractResolver
{
    protected override IList<JsonProperty> CreateProperties(Type type, MemberSerialization memberSerialization)
    {
        var props = type.GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance)
                        .Select(p => base.CreateProperty(p, memberSerialization))
                    .Union(type.GetFields(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance)
                               .Select(f => base.CreateProperty(f, memberSerialization)))
                    .ToList();
        props.ForEach(p => { p.Writable = true; p.Readable = true; });
        return props;
    }
}

2) Then you can serialize your object like

var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings() { ContractResolver = new MyContractResolver() };

// dtoInstance is your dto instance you wish to serialize.
string serializedDTO = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(dtoInstance, settings);

3) And you can deserialize like

var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings() { ContractResolver = new MyContractResolver() };  

MyDTO deserializedDTO = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<MyDTO>(serializedDTO, settings);