I'm investigating about XML serialization, and since I use lot of dictionary, I would like to serialize them as well. I found the following solution for that (I'm quite proud of it! :) ). [XmlInclude(typeof(Foo))] public class XmlDictionary<TKey, TValue> { /// <summary> /// Key/value pair. /// </summary> public struct DictionaryItem { /// <summary> /// Dictionary item key. /// </summary> public TKey Key; /// <summary> /// Dictionary item value. /// </summary> public TValue Value; } /// <summary> /// Dictionary items. /// </summary> public DictionaryItem[] Items { get { List<DictionaryItem> items = new List<DictionaryItem>(ItemsDictionary.Count); foreach (KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue> pair in ItemsDictionary) { DictionaryItem item; item.Key = pair.Key; item.Value = pair.Value; items.Add(item); } return (items.ToArray()); } set { ItemsDictionary = new Dictionary<TKey,TValue>(); foreach (DictionaryItem item in value) ItemsDictionary.Add(item.Key, item.Value); } } /// <summary> /// Indexer base on dictionary key. /// </summary> /// <param name="key"></param> /// <returns></returns> public TValue this[TKey key] { get { return (ItemsDictionary[key]); } set { Debug.Assert(value != null); ItemsDictionary[key] = value; } } /// <summary> /// Delegate for get key from a dictionary value. /// </summary> /// <param name="value"></param> /// <returns></returns> public delegate TKey GetItemKeyDelegate(TValue value); /// <summary> /// Add a range of values automatically determining the associated keys. /// </summary> /// <param name="values"></param> /// <param name="keygen"></param> public void AddRange(IEnumerable<TValue> values, GetItemKeyDelegate keygen) { foreach (TValue v in values) ItemsDictionary.Add(keygen(v), v); } /// <summary> /// Items dictionary. /// </summary> [XmlIgnore] public Dictionary<TKey, TValue> ItemsDictionary = new Dictionary<TKey,TValue>(); } The classes deriving from this class are serialized in the following way: <XmlProcessList xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <Items> <DictionaryItemOfInt32Foo> <Key/> <Value/> </DictionaryItemOfInt32XmlProcess> <Items> This give me a good solution, but: How can I control the name of the element DictionaryItemOfInt32Foo What happens if I define a Dictionary<FooInt32, Int32> and I have the classes Foo and FooInt32? Is it possible to optimize the class above? THank you very much!