Serializing encapsulated lists in a Web Service

I have a class MyClass containing a private List<MySecondClass> myList. The list is exposed through a getter as follows:

public IEnumerable<MySecondClass> MyList
{
    get { return myList.Select(a => a); }
}

The list is modified through public AddItem(MySecondClass itemToAdd) and ClearItems() methods. I believe that this is a properly encapsulated list.

The problem lies in that I need to pass an object of type MyClass (containing myList) via SOAP to a web service, which fills myList (using the AddItem() method), and then returns the object.

However, when the webmethod returns the class, after serialization myList is empty. I am suspecting this is because I do not have a setter for 开发者_如何学编程myList, which is causing the list not to be set during serialization.

Is this a good assumption, or am I way off? If the problem is what I think it is, is there a way to allow for the list to be successfully passed from the webmethod without breaking encapsulation (I do not want to expose a generic list)?

Without trying this directly myself, I believe that you could definitely be correct.

serialization in .NET makes utilizing read only properties a fun circus.because the .net default serialization process requires a setter property in order to "deserialize" the object. Without a setter property the serialization piece will still work allowing you to serialize to a drive or across the network. But, it is the deserialization process that will fail which could definitely be why your collection is empty. Im just amazed it doesn't error out to be honest.

Have you tried to add a simple setter just to verify that this is in fact the issue just so that we know with 100% certainty that this is the problem before working to solve it.

While I never really solved the initial problem, what I did do to get it working was simplify the data that was being passed to the web method. Instead of passing an entire object to the web method, I instead passed a unique identifier. The webmethod then returns the list I need, and I handle actually adding the items in this list to the object client-side.

The XML Serializer used by ASMX services only serializes public read/write properties.