[Mono-list] c# serialization

[Ricardo Kirkner]

Hello. I am sorry to post this here, because it is a question not regarding mono specifically but c# in general, but i did not find answers to my question anywhere else.   I would like to serialize a class that has the following structure (this is an abstraction)   public var1; public var2; public type;   where one instance of this class can only have var1 or var2 instantiated. Therefore I introduced variable type. So I can know which variable is currently the right one (i.e. type=var1 or type=var2). When it comes to serialization, i would like to get only the "used" variable serialized (i.e if type=var1 then I would like to have onle var1 serialized, and not both)   So far i have found that in order to serialize a class i could prepend the [Serializable] attribute to my class, and it would serialize every public variable. In order not to get variable type serialized, i could prepend the [XmlIgnore] attribute and that would do the job; but how can i tell that one variable should get serialized based on the contents of another variable of an instance of my class. I was thinking of something like...   [if this.type="var2" then XmlIgnore] public var1;   [if this.type="var1" then XmlIgnore] public var2;   but of course this does not work at all.   If anyone out there knows a hint to give me, I would really apreciate it.   With regards, (and apologizing for my english)   Ricardo Kirkner