Should Empty XML Elements Have Closing Tags?

Create XML Element Without Closing Tag

The xml package in Go does not provide a way to explicitly control whether an element is rendered with an end-tag or not. However, as the provided answer deftly points out, there is no functional difference between the two forms at the XML level:

<soapenv:Header></soapenv:Header>

and

<soapenv:Header/>

Both represent an empty element, signaling to conforming XML processors that it does not contain any child nodes.

The XML community has historically recommended using empty element tags for elements declared as "EMPTY" to improve interoperability with older SGML processors that predate modern XML standards. However, this recommendation is not binding and has no practical implications for modern XML processing applications.

Therefore, users should not be concerned with whether an empty element is rendered with or without an end-tag. The choice is largely a matter of style preference and can be safely left to the encoding/xml package to determine.

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