I got 2 classes, for example:

public class A
{
    private B b;
    ...
}

public class B
{
    ...
}

I need to serialize an object A using BinaryFormatter. When remoting it shall include the field b, but not when serialize to file. Here is what I added:

[Serializable]
public class A : MarshalByRefObject
{
        private B b;

        [OnSerializing]
        private void OnSerializing(StreamingContext context)
        {
            if (context.State == StreamingContextStates.File)
            {
                this.b = null;        
            }
        }
    ...
}

[Serializable]
public class B : MarshalByRefObject
{
    ...
}

I think this is a bad design because if another class C also contains B, in class C we must add the duplicate OnSerializing() logic as in A. Class B should decide what to do, not class A or C.

I don't want to use ISerializable interface because there are too many variables in class B have to be added to SerializationInfo.

I can create a SerializationSurrogate for class B, which perform nothing in GetObjectData() & SetObjectData(), then use it when serializing to file. However the same maintenance issue because whoever modify class B can't notice what going to happen during serialization & the existence of SerializationSurrogate.

Is there a better alternative?