NHibernate + YaxLib = realtype = proxy about yaxlib

[asbjornu]

Hi. What you want to do is not recommended practice. You shouldn't directly expose your NHibernate object model to serialization because you won't be in (full) control over what is serialized and how. Especially with lazy loaded references, many-to-many and such, the performance can really suffer.

You should instead, as you write, use AutoMapper or something similar to map just the data you want from the domain model to DTO objects that is then serialized. It's the same with ViewModels in MVC too; you should map and expose only the data you need for your view and not the entire domain model. This gives you precise control over what is exposed and how it performs.

So while there are hacks you can apply to make your use-case work, I'd strongly recommend you to avoid it and instead just do the mapping. Yes, it's a bit tedious to create the DTO objects, but it will be worth it. Jimmy Bogard (the author of AutoMapper) has written about this exact subject, which is highly recommended reading.

[katlimruiz]

Many thanks for the answer, indeed this is what Im going to do.

My DTOs inherit from the model (just to automatically have fields added) and for all complex properties (not primitives) I've put YAXDoNotSerialize, so I do mapping for them with AutoMapper and also have the YaxSerializeAs on the class declaration so the xml does not show the DTOs names.