Question

I am using an XmlSerializer to serialize an object to xml. After the object gets serialized, I end up with something like…

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xml xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
</xml>

I need to have it return simply…

<xml></xml>

Is there a way to serialize xml without the extra information? I realize strictly proper xml requires these additional elements, but I need the simpler form as I am appending these xml strings together to form a larger xml blob.

UPDATE

I was able to get the following code to work…

    public static string Serialize(object o)
    {
        XmlWriterSettings xws = new XmlWriterSettings();
        xws.OmitXmlDeclaration = true;
        xws.Indent = true;

        XmlSerializerNamespaces ns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
        ns.Add(String.Empty, String.Empty);

        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        XmlWriter xmlw = XmlWriter.Create(sb, xws);
        XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(o.GetType());
        serializer.Serialize(xmlw, o, ns);
        xmlw.Flush();

        return sb.ToString();
    }

Answer 1

In C#, you can do something like this:

XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(object));
StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter();

using (XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(stringWriter, new XmlWriterSettings() { OmitXmlDeclaration = true }))
{
    serializer.Serialize(writer, this, new XmlSerializerNamespaces() { "",""});
}
string xmlText = stringWriter.ToString();

Explanation:

OmitXmlDeclaration = true makes it remove the declaration.

new XmlSerializerNamespaces() { "",""} removes the namespaces.