What is the difference between XmlArrayAttribute and XmlArrayItemAttribute?

Question

What is the difference between XmlArrayAttribute and XmlArrayItemAttribute? Please explain both sides (i.e. serialzing and deserialzing).

Solution

A short answer - with the XmlArrayAttribute you change how the whole collection is serialized (so e.g. what is the name of the xml tag that will contain the entries), and with XmlArrayItemAttribute you control every item. Really good examples are here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2baksw0z.aspx