How to Remove the Root Element from an XML Collection during .NET Serialization?

XML Serialization - Disable Root Element Rendering in Collections

Question:

Can the root element of a collection be suppressed during XML serialization in .NET?

Problem:

Consider a class with serialization attributes like the following:

[XmlRoot(ElementName="SHOPITEM", Namespace="")]
public class ShopItem
{
    [XmlElement("PRODUCTNAME")]
    public string ProductName { get; set; }

    [XmlArrayItem("VARIANT")]
    public List<ShopItem> Variants { get; set; }
}

This results in XML like this:

<SHOPITEM xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <PRODUCTNAME>test</PRODUCTNAME>
  <Variants>
    <VARIANT>
      <PRODUCTNAME>hi 1</PRODUCTNAME>
    </VARIANT>
    <VARIANT>
      <PRODUCTNAME>hi 2</PRODUCTNAME>
    </VARIANT>
  </Variants>
</SHOPITEM>

However, the goal is to remove the element entirely. Additionally, the xsi and xsd namespaces should be omitted from the root element. Is this possible?

Answer:

To disable the rendering of the root element for a collection, replace the [XmlArrayItem] attribute with [XmlElement] in your code. To remove the xsi and xsd namespaces, create an XmlSerializerNamespaces instance with an empty namespace and pass it during serialization.

Here's an updated example:

[XmlRoot("SHOPITEM")]
public class ShopItem
{
    [XmlElement("PRODUCTNAME")]
    public string ProductName { get; set; }

    [XmlElement("VARIANT")]
    public List<ShopItem> Variants { get; set; }
}

// ...

// Create a serializer namespaces object
XmlSerializerNamespaces ns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
ns.Add("", "");

// Create a serializer and pass in the namespaces object
XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(ShopItem));
ser.Serialize(Console.Out, item, ns);

This will produce the following output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ibm850"?>
<SHOPITEM>
  <PRODUCTNAME>test</PRODUCTNAME>
  <VARIANT>
    <PRODUCTNAME>hi 1</PRODUCTNAME>
  </VARIANT>
  <VARIANT>
    <PRODUCTNAME>hi 2</PRODUCTNAME>
  </VARIANT>
</SHOPITEM>

The above is the detailed content of How to Remove the Root Element from an XML Collection during .NET Serialization?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!