Description

After upgrading from DNN 10.2.3 to 10.3.0, DDRMenu fails to render with an XmlSerializer error. The menu completely disappears from the site.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Have a working DNN 10.2.3 site with DDRMenu using token templates (.txt files)
2. Upgrade to DNN 10.3.0
3. Visit any page — the menu is gone

Expected Behavior

Menu renders normally after upgrade.

Actual Behavior

Menu does not render. The following error appears in the DNN Event Log:

Message: Cannot deserialize type 'DotNetNuke.Entities.Users.UserProfile' 
because it contains property 'IsDirty' which has no public setter.

StackTrace:
   at System.Xml.Serialization.TypeScope.GetSettableMembers(StructMapping mapping, ArrayList list)
   at System.Xml.Serialization.TypeScope.GetSettableMembers(StructMapping structMapping)
   at System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializationReaderILGen.WriteLiteralStructMethod(StructMapping structMapping)
   at DotNetNuke.Web.DDRMenu.DNNCommon.Utilities.SerialiserFor(Type t)
   at DotNetNuke.Web.DDRMenu.TemplateEngine.TokenTemplateProcessor.Render(
       Object source, HtmlTextWriter htmlWriter, TemplateDefinition liveDefinition)
   at DotNetNuke.Web.DDRMenu.MenuBase.Render(HtmlTextWriter htmlWriter)
   at DotNetNuke.Web.DDRMenu.SkinObject.Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)

Root Cause Analysis

The TokenTemplateProcessor.Render() method in DDRMenu passes a MenuXml object (which includes a UserInfo property) to XmlSerializer. The UserInfo.Profile property is of type UserProfile, which in DNN 10.3.0 has an IsDirty property without a public setter. XmlSerializer requires all public read/write properties to have public setters for deserialization, and throws when encountering IsDirty.

This worked in 10.2.3 because IsDirty either had a public setter or was not a public property.

Workarounds Attempted (none worked)

• Setting IncludeContext="false" on the <dnn:MENU> skin object
• Reverting to DDRMenu DLL from 10.2.3 (does not help because the UserProfile class change is in DotNetNuke.dll)
• Reverting to DNN 10.2.3 DLLs — only working solution

Suggested Fix

Either:

1. Add [XmlIgnore] attribute to UserProfile.IsDirty property
2. Add a public setter to UserProfile.IsDirty
3. Modify DDRMenu.DNNCommon.Utilities.SerialiserFor() to use XmlAttributeOverrides to ignore problematic properties
4. Modify TokenTemplateProcessor to not serialize the full UserInfo object when context is not needed

Environment

• DNN Version: 10.3.0 (upgraded from 10.2.3)
• DDRMenu Version: 10.3.0 (also tested with 10.2.3 DLL)
• .NET Framework: 4.8
• Database: SQL Server 2017
• Menu Template: Token-based (.txt), not Razor