CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#xmllinq
Greg Gum
Greg Gum

Reputation: 38109

How do I remove null properties from xml?

Background: I am loading a class from a file through XamlReader.Load(), working with it and then saving it back to a file through XamlWriter.Save(). The original file has no null properties, but the resulting saved file has all properties whether or not they are null, and it bloats the file. So I would like to remove them before actually saving to disk.

I have the following xml fragment as a string. I need to remove all properties which have "{assembly:Null}" as the value. 

<ElementMap ElementType="SegmentData" 
  Key="{assembly:Null}" 
  EntityPropertyMapping="SenderCode" 
  Name="Application Sender's Code" 
  ElementCode="GS02" 
  EdiDataType="AN" 
  EntityDataType="String" 
  MinLength="2" 
  MaxLength="15" 
  Position="0" 
  ElementIndex="2" 
  ValidateData="False" 
  Parent="{assembly:Null}" 
  IsRequired="True" 
  Note="{assembly:Null}" 
  Default="{assembly:Null}" 
  Example="{assembly:Null}" 
  ExcludeFromStringOutput="False" />

The end result would be:

<ElementMap 
  ElementType="SegmentData" 
  EntityPropertyMapping="SenderCode" 
  Name="Application Sender's Code" 
  ElementCode="GS02" 
  EdiDataType="AN" 
  EntityDataType="String" 
  MinLength="2" 
  MaxLength="15" 
  Position="0" 
  ElementIndex="2" 
  ValidateData="False" 
  IsRequired="True" 
  ExcludeFromStringOutput="False" />

So how can this be achieved?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 248

Answers (2)

Sergey Berezovskiy
Sergey Berezovskiy

Reputation: 236318

You can use LINQ to XML:

var elementMap = XElement.Load(path_to_xml); // or XElement.Parse(xml_string)
elementMap.Attributes().Where(a => (string)a == "{assembly:Null}").Remove();
elementMap.Save(path_to_xml);

Extensions.Remove() method removes every matched attribute from parent node.

Upvotes: 3

It&#39;sNotALie.
It&#39;sNotALie.

Reputation: 22814

XElement element = //get the XElement
element = new XElement(element.Name,
     element.Attributes.Where(a => (string)a != "{assembly:Null}")
     .Concat(element.Elements()).ToArray());

Upvotes: 1

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