List, SortedList, Dictionary to store objects by key and serialize them?

Question

My requirements:

• I need to store a collection of objects inside a class,

• objects must be accessible by their key (which will be unique string), search/remove/replace must work like this

  MyClass somethingNew = new MyClass();
  // set someproperties on somethingNew    
  somethingNew.Id = "FooBar";    
  // theOtherObject already contains an object with the key "FooBar"    
  theOtherObject.Members[somethingNew.Id] = somethingNew;
  

• when new object is inserted no sort should happen,

• the property (collection) must be serializable to XML using DataContractSerializer.

So, what to choose for Members property? I guess that List and SortedList are out of the question, so I am about to use generic

Dictionary<string, MyClass>.

Is this the right decision? Does it support serialization?

Answer 1

Dictionary<string, MyClass> is the correct option in this case.

And yes, it is Serializable.

Answer 2

Another class you may want to consider KeyedCollection<TKey,TItem>. It is also serializable.

The KeyedCollection class is a hybrid between a collection based on the IList generic interface and a collection based on the IDictionary generic interface. Like collections based on the IList generic interface, KeyedCollection is an indexed list of items. Like collections based on the IDictionary generic interface, KeyedCollection has a key associated with each element. *

*Referenced from MSDN documentation from link above.

Edit: One thing to note is that KeyedCollection<TKey,TItem> is an abstract class and you will need to derive an instance of that class, ex) MyClassCollection before you can begin using it.