SGen XmlSerializers

My VS2005 C# web project was perfectly working in my development environment but I got the following error after deploying in a production environment:

Configuration Error
Parser Error Message: Cannot deserialize [C:\data.xml].

Using the fusion log viewer (FUSLOGVW.EXE) reveals a binding exception to Assembly.XmlSerializers.dll, where Assembly is the name of the assembly which contains the classes serialized in data.xml.

My ASP.NET application runs as a dedicated application pool under the credentials of a windows user which has very limited rights. The problem is related to the user rights which prevent the ASP.NET process from automatically generating XmlSerializers.

Visual Studio cannot generate XmlSerializers

On the build tab of your VS project properties, there is an option called “Generate Serialization Assemblies” which you can set to “On”.

If you look at MSBuild commands in the output window, doing so actually adds a command line which looks like the following:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\bin\sgen.exe /assembly:"Assembly.dll" /proxytypes /reference:"reference1.dll" … /reference:"referenceN.dll" /compiler:/keycontainer:VS_KEY_5EFB7881D71082EDCF85DBBFCD748B9A /compiler:/delaysign-

Note the /proxytypes option which actually prevents SGen from generating your XmlSerializers as specified in the documentation for the XML Serializer Generator Tool (Sgen.exe).

Use SGen as a post-build event

As a consequence you need to add the SGen command as a custom post-build event on the Build Events tab of your VS project properties:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\sgen.exe" /force /assembly:"$(TargetPath)" /compiler:/keycontainer:VS_KEY_5EFB7881D71082EDCF85DBBFCD748B9A /compiler:/delaysign-

Other interesting links

• Using SGen.exe to Automatically pre-generate your XmlSerializers
• XmlSerializer and XSD Type Inheritance: does it work?
• Strongly-typed, event-rising, design-time generated custom XmlSerializers (even more than Whidbey sgen!)