XmlSerializer giving FileNotFoundException at cons

Question

An application I've been working with is failing when I try to serialize types.

A statement like

XmlSerializer lizer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyType));

produces:

System.IO.FileNotFoundException occurred
  Message="Could not load file or assembly '[Containing Assembly of MyType].XmlSerializers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified."
  Source="mscorlib"
  FileName="[Containing Assembly of MyType].XmlSerializers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null"
  FusionLog=""
  StackTrace:
       at System.Reflection.Assembly._nLoad(AssemblyName fileName, String codeBase, Evidence assemblySecurity, Assembly locationHint, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean throwOnFileNotFound, Boolean forIntrospection)
       at System.Reflection.Assembly.nLoad(AssemblyName fileName, String codeBase, Evidence assemblySecurity, Assembly locationHint, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean throwOnFileNotFound, Boolean forIntrospection)

I don't define any special serializers for my class.

How can I fix this problem?

Answer 1

Troubleshooting compilation errors on the other hand is very complicated. These problems manifest themselves in a FileNotFoundException with the message:

File or assembly name abcdef.dll, or one of its dependencies, was not found. File name: "abcdef.dll"
   at System.Reflection.Assembly.nLoad( ... )
   at System.Reflection.Assembly.InternalLoad( ... )
   at System.Reflection.Assembly.Load(...)
   at System.CodeDom.Compiler.CompilerResults.get_CompiledAssembly() 

You may wonder what a file not found exception has to do with instantiating a serializer object, but remember: the constructor writes C# files and tries to compile them. The call stack of this exception provides some good information to support that suspicion. The exception occurred while the XmlSerializer attempted to load an assembly generated by CodeDOM calling the System.Reflection.Assembly.Load method. The exception does not provide an explanation as to why the assembly that the XmlSerializer was supposed to create was not present. In general, the assembly is not present because the compilation failed, which may happen because, under rare circumstances, the serialization attributes produce code that the C# compiler fails to compile.

Note This error also occurs when the XmlSerializer runs under an account or a security environment that is not able to access the temp directory.

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa302290.aspx

Answer 2

In Visual Studio project properties there is an option saying "generate serialization assembly". Try turning it on for a project that generates [Containing Assembly of MyType].

Answer 3

Believe it or not, this is normal behaviour. An exception is thrown but handled by the XmlSerializer, so if you just ignore it everything should continue on fine.

I have found this very anoying, and there have been many complaints about this if you search around a bit, but from what I've read Microsoft don't plan on doing anything about it.

You can avoid getting Exception popups all the time while debugging if you switch off first chance exceptions for that specific exception. In Visual Studio, go to Debug -> Exceptions (or press Ctrl + Alt + E), Common Language Runtime Exceptions -> System.IO -> System.IO.FileNotFoundException.

You can find information about another way around it in the blog post C# XmlSerializer FileNotFound exception (Chris Sells' tool XmlSerializerPreCompiler).

Answer 4

Just as reference. Taking from D-B answer and comments, I came with this solution which is close to D-B solution. It works fine in all of my cases and it is thread safe. I don't think that using a ConcurrentDictionary would have been ok.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Xml.Serialization;

namespace HQ.Util.General
{
    public class XmlSerializerHelper
    {
        private static readonly Dictionary<Type, XmlSerializer> _dictTypeToSerializer = new Dictionary<Type, XmlSerializer>();

        public static XmlSerializer GetSerializer(Type type)
        {
            lock (_dictTypeToSerializer)
            {
                XmlSerializer serializer;
                if (! _dictTypeToSerializer.TryGetValue(type, out serializer))
                {
                    var importer = new XmlReflectionImporter();
                    var mapping = importer.ImportTypeMapping(type, null, null);
                    serializer = new XmlSerializer(mapping);
                    return _dictTypeToSerializer[type] = serializer;
                }

                return serializer;
            }
        }
    }
}

Usage:

        if (File.Exists(Path))
        {
            using (XmlTextReader reader = new XmlTextReader(Path))
            {
                // XmlSerializer x  = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
                var x = XmlSerializerHelper.GetSerializer(typeof(T));

                try
                {
                    options = (OptionsBase<T>)x.Deserialize(reader);
                }
                catch (Exception ex)
                {
                    Log.Instance.AddEntry(LogType.LogException, "Unable to open Options file: " + Path, ex);
                }
            }
        }

Answer 5

I was getting the same error, and it was due to the type I was trying to deserialize not having a default parameterless constructor. I added a constructor, and it started working.