Question

I have a couple extension methods that handle serialization of my classes, and since it can be a time consuming process, they are created once per class, and handed out by this method.

public static XmlSerializer GetSerializerFor(Type typeOfT)
{
    if (!serializers.ContainsKey(typeOfT))
    {
        var xmlAttributes = new XmlAttributes();
        var xmlAttributeOverrides = new XmlAttributeOverrides();

        System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("XmlSerializerFactory.GetSerializerFor(typeof({0}));", typeOfT));

        xmlAttributes.Xmlns = false;
        xmlAttributeOverrides.Add(typeOfT, xmlAttributes);

        var newSerializer = new XmlSerializer(typeOfT, xmlAttributeOverrides);
        serializers.Add(typeOfT, newSerializer);
    }

    return serializers[typeOfT];
}

This is called by the extension method .Serialize()

public static XElement Serialize(this object source)
{
    try
    {
        var serializer = XmlSerializerFactory.GetSerializerFor(source.GetType());
        var xdoc = new XDocument();
        using (var writer = xdoc.CreateWriter())
        {
            serializer.Serialize(writer, source, new XmlSerializerNamespaces(new[] { new XmlQualifiedName("", "") }));
        }

        return (xdoc.Document != null) ? xdoc.Document.Root : new XElement("Error", "Document Missing");
    }
    catch (Exception x)
    {
        return new XElement("Error", x.ToString());
    }
}

Unfortunately, when Serializing classes that are auto-generated, they have the attribute XmlTypeAttribute(Namespace="http://tempuri.org/") applied to them.

This causes the deserialization by the the non-auto-generated counterparts to fail.

I need the serializer to completely ignore and not apply the namespace, but what I have written in the first block of code doesn’t seem to remove it, I still end up with xml like this

<Note>
  <ID xmlns="http://tempuri.org/">12</ID>
  <Author xmlns="http://tempuri.org/">
    <ID>1234</ID>
    <Type>Associate</Type>
    <IsAvailable>false</IsAvailable>
  </Author>
  <Created xmlns="http://tempuri.org/">2010-06-22T09:38:01.5024351-05:00</Created>
  <Text xmlns="http://tempuri.org/">This is an update</Text>
</Note>

Instead of the same, minus the xmlns="http://tempuri.org/" attribute.

Please help, thanks, this is driving me crazy!

EDIT:

I know the problem, just not how to fix it.

My class, isn’t just full of simple types.

It contains properties with types of other classes. Which are also auto-generated with the XmlTypeAttribute(Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/") attribute. So what is happening, is that when serialization occurs, and it serializes the properties of my class, they aren’t going through my custom serialization, and thus, are having the attribute applied and not overridden.

Now I just need to figure out how to jump that hoop. Any thoughts as to how?

EDIT 2:

The following works to serialize WITHOUT xmlns… but I’m having a problem on the deserialization end, just not yet sure if it’s related or not

public static XmlSerializer GetSerializerFor(Type typeOfT)
{
    if (!serializers.ContainsKey(typeOfT))
    {
        var xmlAttributes = new XmlAttributes();
        var xmlAttributeOverrides = new XmlAttributeOverrides();

        System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("XmlSerializerFactory.GetSerializerFor(typeof({0}));", typeOfT));

        xmlAttributes.XmlType = new XmlTypeAttribute
        {
            Namespace = ""
        };

        xmlAttributes.Xmlns = false;

        var types = new List<Type> {typeOfT, typeOfT.BaseType};

        foreach (var property in typeOfT.GetProperties())
        {
            types.Add(property.PropertyType);
        }

        types.RemoveAll(t => t.ToString().StartsWith("System."));

        foreach (var type in types)
        {
            xmlAttributeOverrides.Add(type, xmlAttributes);
        }

        var newSerializer = new XmlSerializer(typeOfT, xmlAttributeOverrides);
        //var newSerializer = new XmlSerializer(typeOfT, xmlAttributeOverrides, extraTypes.ToArray(), new XmlRootAttribute(), string.Empty);
        //var newSerializer = new XmlSerializer(typeOfT, string.Empty);

        serializers.Add(typeOfT, newSerializer);
    }

    return serializers[typeOfT];
}

EDIT3:
Ended up using solution from
How to remove all namespaces from XML with C#?

public static XElement RemoveAllNamespaces(this XElement source)
{
    return !source.HasElements
               ? new XElement(source.Name.LocalName)
                     {
                         Value = source.Value
                     }
               : new XElement(source.Name.LocalName, source.Elements().Select(el => RemoveAllNamespaces(el)));
}

Answer 1

No problem – just pass an empty string as the default namespace to the XML serializer:

XmlSerializer newSerializer = 
   new XmlSerializer(typeOfT, "");

Unfortunately, there’s no easy constructor overload if you really need to define the XmlAttributeOverrides and the default namespace – so either you can skip the XmlAttributeOverrides and use that constructor I mentioned, or you need to use the one that defines all possible parameters (including XmlAttributeOverrides and default XML namespaces – and a few more).