Question

I have following classes, note that B inherits A:

[XmlInclude(typeof(B))]
public class A
{...}

public class B : A
{...}

When an instance of B is serialized, then the xsi:type attribute is added:

<A xsi:type="B">

Why does this happen? The result should be just <B>.

This is the code for serialization:

var b = new B();
using (var writer = new XmlTextWriterFull(stream, Encoding.UTF8))
{
    writer.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
    var s = new XmlSerializer(typeof(B));
    s.Serialize(writer, b);
}

This doesn’t happen with other classes that I serialize. Is it because the classes are in different namespaces?

How can I workaround this problem?

Answer 1

Try this approach:

    B b = new B();
    byte[] data = SerializeObject(b);
    File.WriteAllBytes("test.xml", data);

Here is code for serialization

    /// <summary>
    /// Serialize object
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="data"></param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    internal static byte[] SerializeObject(object data)
    {
        XmlSerializerNamespaces ns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
        //empty namespace...
        ns.Add("", "");
        XmlSerializer xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer(data.GetType());
        MemoryStream memStream = new MemoryStream();
        xmlSerializer.Serialize(memStream, data, ns);
        byte[] result = memStream.ToArray();
        memStream.Dispose();
        return result;
    }

And serialized result is:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<B>
</B>