Question

Is there an attribute to skip empty arrays in the xml-serialization of c#? This would increase human-readability of the xml-output.

Answer 1

Well, you could perhaps add a ShouldSerializeFoo() method:

using System; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Xml.Serialization; [Serializable] public class MyEntity {     public string Key { get; set; }      public string[] Items { get; set; }      [EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Never), Browsable(false)]     public bool ShouldSerializeItems()     {         return Items != null && Items.Length > 0;     } }  static class Program {     static void Main()     {         MyEntity obj = new MyEntity { Key = 'abc', Items = new string[0] };         XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyEntity));         ser.Serialize(Console.Out, obj);     } } 

The ShouldSerialize{name} patten is recognised, and the method is called to see whether to include the property in the serialization. There is also an alternative {name}Specified pattern that allows you to also detect things when deserializing (via the setter):

[EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Never), Browsable(false)] [XmlIgnore] public bool ItemsSpecified {     get { return Items != null && Items.Length > 0; }     set { } // could set the default array here if we want }