title: Serializing an entity's field using Entity Framework 4
body: <p>I've recently been working on a portal using MVC2 and I'm trying to use EF4 as the DAL.</p>
  
  <p>I have an entity called WidgetInstance which serializes it's state into json. EF4 correctly identifies this as a string field but I need this to deserialize to a <code>List&lt;WidgetState&gt;</code> when it's loaded and serialize back to a string when saving/updating.</p>
  
  <p>I've googled and SO'd for an hour or so now without much success. I don't really want to create a new DB table for the widget states.</p>
  
  <p>Has anyone attempted to do this before or have any pointers where I can get started with this?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks</p>