Viv, Naomi, thank you very much for your suggestion. But that somehow defeats the very concept of anonymous types no? Using a json library, I was perfectly able to serialize an anonymous type, I wonder why that is not implemented for xml which conceptually is very similar.

>>

>>        public static void GetTransactions()
>>        {
>>            using (var context = new PICSEntities(Config.model.SqlServer))
>>            {
>>                var q = from p in context.Parcels
>>                        join pt in context.ParcelInventoryTypes on p.ParcelInventoryTypes_Id equals pt.ParcelInventoryTypes_Id
>>                        join t in context.TransactionDetails on p.Parcels_Id equals t.Parcels_Id
>>                        join h in context.TransactionHeaders on t.TransactionHeaders_Id equals h.TransactionHeaders_Id
>>                        join g in context.GoodsTypes on p.GoodsTypes_Id equals g.GoodsTypes_Id
>>                        join tt in context.TransactionTypes on h.TransactionTypes_Id equals tt.TransactionTypes_Id
>>                        select new
>>                        {
>>                            Parcels_Id = p.Parcels_Id,
>>                            Goods = g.Description,
>>                            Inventory = pt.Description,
>>                            RSReference = p.RSReference,
>>                            Transaction_Nr = h.TransactionHeaders_Id,
>>                            Transaction_Type = tt.TransactionTypes_Id,
>>                            Date = h.TransactionDate,
>>                            Weight = t.Weight,
>>                            Amount = t.Amount
>>                        };
>>                // Json.serialize(q, @"c:\docs\q.json");
>>                Monitor.Console($"Extracted {q.Count()} records.");
>>                using (var fs = new System.IO.FileStream(@"c:\docs\q.xml", System.IO.FileMode.Create))
>>                {
>>                    System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer x = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(q.GetType());
>>                    x.Serialize(fs, q);
>>                }
>>            }
>>        }
>>

>>This breaks here :
>>

>>                    System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer x = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(q.GetType());
>>

>>Cannot serialize anonymous types.
>>Is there a way around this?
>
>As Naomi says you will need to create a class to hold the results and also convert the result to a list for serialization. e.g:

public class Thing
>    {
>        public int Parcels_Id { get; set; }
>        public string Goods { get; set; }
>        // etc
>    }

then:

select new Thing{Parcels_Id = Parcels_Id.......}
>//and:
>     using (var fs = new System.IO.FileStream(@"c:\docs\q.xml", System.IO.FileMode.Create))
>                {
>                    System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer x = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(typeof(Thing[]),new XmlRootAttribute("MyThings"));
>                    x.Serialize(fs, q.ToArray());
>                }