Storing Generics in ASP.NET Profile object

Sometimes, I'll come across a problem that I research for an hour or two. When I find the solution, I think "Wow, that should have been the first thing I tried!"

This is one of those occasions. 

I decided to use the ASP.NET profile instead of Session objects to store a list of products.  So, in web.config, I tried a number of "work-arounds" that I found online, including:

   1:  <profile>

   2:  ...

   3:        <properties>

   4:          <add name="RecentlyViewed" allowAnonymous="false" type="System.Collections.Generic.List`1[Model.Product]" serializeAs="Xml"/>

   5:        </properties>

   6:  </profile>

The problem I was having, and it seems a lot of people are having, is that System.Collections.Generic.List`1[Model.Product] throws an error. For some people, it seems to work. Well, I tried changing the lt and gt in the generic list so the XML would parse it as it is written in the code-behind. That didnt work.

The solution: Create a class which inherits from List<Model.Product>

For instance:

   1:  using System;

   2:  using System.Collections.Generic;

   3:   

   4:  namespace Model

   5:  {

   6:      /// <summary>

   7:      /// This class wraps the Generic List into a class to serialize in Profile provider

   8:      /// </summary>

   9:      [Serializable]

  10:      public class RecentlyViewed : List<Model.Product>

  11:      {

  12:          public RecentlyViewed()

  13:          {

  14:          }

  15:      }

  16:  }

This works beautifully! Now, in web.config, you can do the following:

   1:  <profile>

   2:  ...

   3:        <properties>

   4:          <add name="RecentlyViewed" allowAnonymous="false" type="Model.RecentlyViewed" serializeAs="Xml"/>

   5:        </properties>

   6:  </profile>