Question

I am using this method to transform an object to XML:

protected XmlDocument SerializeAnObject(object obj)
{
    XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
    DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(obj.GetType());
    MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();
    try
    {
        serializer.WriteObject(stream, obj);
        stream.Position = 0;
        doc.Load(stream);
        return doc;
    }
    finally
    {
        stream.Close();
        stream.Dispose();
    }
}

Eventually I get something like:

<CaCT>
  <CTC i:nil="true" xmlns="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/a.b.BusinessEntities.InnerEntities" /> 
  <CTDescr xmlns="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/a.b.BusinessEntities.InnerEntities">blabla</CTDescr> 
  <CaId>464</CaId> 
  </CaCT>

How can I get rid of the i:nil="true" and the xmlns="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/a.b.BusinessEntities.InnerEntities"?

Answer 1

Personally I’ve always found that hand-written XML serialization with LINQ to XML works well. It’s as flexible as you want, you can make it backward and forward compatible in whatever way you want, and obviously you don’t end up with any extra namespaces or attributes that you don’t want.

Obviously it becomes more complicated the more complicated your classes are, but I’ve found it works very well for simple classes. It’s at least an alternative to consider.