Question

I’m using XmlWriterSettings to write Xml to file. I have elements with only attributes, no children. I want them to output as:

<element a="1" /> 

instead of

<element a="1"></element>

Can i do it with XmlWriterSettings?

EDIT:

Code is as follows:

private void Mission_Save(string fileName)
    {
        StreamWriter streamWriter = new StreamWriter(fileName, false);
        streamWriter.Write(Mission_ToXml());
        streamWriter.Close();
        streamWriter.Dispose();

        _MissionFilePath = fileName;
    }

private string Mission_ToXml()
    {
        XmlDocument xDoc;
        XmlElement root;
        XmlAttribute xAtt;

        xDoc = new XmlDocument();

        foreach (string item in _MissionCommentsBefore)
            xDoc.AppendChild(xDoc.CreateComment(item));

        root = xDoc.CreateElement("mission_data");
        xAtt = xDoc.CreateAttribute("version");
        xAtt.Value = "1.61";
        root.Attributes.Append(xAtt); 
        xDoc.AppendChild(root);

        //Out the xml's!
        foreach (TreeNode node in _FM_tve_Mission.Nodes)
            Mission_ToXml_private_RecursivelyOut(root, xDoc, node);

        foreach (string item in _MissionCommentsAfter)
            xDoc.AppendChild(xDoc.CreateComment(item));


        //Make this look good
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings();

        settings.Indent = true;
        settings.IndentChars = "  ";
        settings.NewLineChars = "\r\n";
        settings.NewLineHandling = NewLineHandling.Replace;
        settings.OmitXmlDeclaration = true;
        using (XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(sb, settings))
        {
            xDoc.Save(writer);
        }

        return sb.ToString();
    }

private void Mission_ToXml_private_RecursivelyOut(XmlNode root, XmlDocument xDoc, TreeNode tNode)
    {
        root.AppendChild(((MissionNode)tNode.Tag).ToXml(xDoc));
        foreach (TreeNode node in tNode.Nodes)
            Mission_ToXml_private_RecursivelyOut(root, xDoc, node);
    }

here _FM_tve_Mission is a TreeView control which has nodes, each of the nodes has a tag of class MissionNode, which has ToXml method that returns XmlNode containing this MissionNode converted to xml

Answer 1

You dont need any special settings for that:

XmlWriter output = XmlWriter.Create(filepath);
 output.writeStartElement("element");
 output.writeAttributeString("a", "1");
 output.writeEndElement();

That will give you an output of <element a="1" /> (Just tested it in an application I am working on writing xml for)

Basically if you dont add any data before you write the end element it will just close it off for you.

I also have the following XmlWriterSettings it may be one of these if it isnt working by default:

XmlWriterSettings wSettings = new XmlWriterSettings();
wSettings.Indent = true;
wSettings.ConformanceLevel = ConformanceLevel.Fragment;
wSettings.OmitXmlDeclaration = true;
XmlWriter output = XmlWriter.Create(filePathXml, wSettings);