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.netxml-serializationxmlserializer
John
John

Reputation: 1922

How do I stop an empty tag from being emitted by XmlSerializer?

I have an object like this,

public class UserObj
{
    public string First {get; set;}
    public string Last  {get; set;}
    public addr Address {get; set;}

}

public class addr
{
    public street {get; set;}
    public town   {get; set;}
}

Now when I use XmlSerializer on it and street and town are empty I get this in the XML output,

 <Address />

Is there a way not to output this empty tag?

Thanks

Upvotes: 6

Views: 1492

Answers (4)

Anand Kumar
Anand Kumar

Reputation: 141

I think assigning null value to address field should work.

Upvotes: 0

Steve Wranovsky
Steve Wranovsky

Reputation: 5723

You can eliminate the empty value by adding a DefaultValue attribute to the property. When the value of the property matches the default value, it isn't serialized. You set the default value to null, to eliminate the serialization. Here's an example:


using System.ComponentModel;
public class UserObj
{
    public string First {get; set;}
    public string Last  {get; set;}

    [DefaultValue(null)]
    public addr Address {get; set;}

}

Upvotes: 1

Thomas Levesque
Thomas Levesque

Reputation: 292465

You can implement a ShouldSerializeAddress method to decide whether or not the Address property should be serialized :

public bool ShouldSerializeAddress()
{
    return Address != null
        && !String.IsNullOrEmpty(Address.street)
        && !String.IsNullOrEmpty(Address.town);
}

If the method exists with this signature, the serializer will call it before serializing the property.

Alternatively, you can implement an AddressSpecified property which has the same role :

public bool AddressSpecified
{
    get
    {
        return Address != null
            && !String.IsNullOrEmpty(Address.street)
            && !String.IsNullOrEmpty(Address.town);
    }
}

Upvotes: 6

Scoregraphic
Scoregraphic

Reputation: 7200

You may implement IXmlSerializable and implement the serialization routine on your own. This way, you can avoid the element.

An example here: http://paltman.com/2006/jul/03/ixmlserializable-a-persistable-example/

Upvotes: 2

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