Question

My application generates XAML files from in-memory objects using the built-in .NET solution: System.XamlServices.Save(Stream, Object)
However, the XAML I get is polluted badly. All properties are always serialized. Is there a way that to tell the XAML serializer to ignore properties that hold their default values? (I have almost full control over the classes that are serialized.)

Expression Blend solves this wonderfully: if we do not change a property, the generated XAML file will not contain it, at all. The resulted XAML is not cluttered with all the possible properties and their default values and does not look like the regular autogenerated mess. I would like to have beautiful XAML, too.

Answer 1

To do this with just one object:

Once:

• Make a new object with default properties
• Serialize it to XAML
• Load it into an XML DOM
• Recurse thru each child and sub-child node
• Save each into a dictionary with the key the XPath of the node, the value the innerXML. Obviously, if you have nodes with the same path this won’t work, you’ll have to qualify them. But in such case you’d probably want to never prune those anyway.
• You don’t need that object anymore. Pitch it, keep the Dictionary around.

For each object:

• Serialize that object to XAML
• Loadit into an XML DOM
• Recurse thru each child and sub-child node
• Look up each XPath in the dictionary.
• If the innerXML is the same, note this in a list of nodes that should be afraid.
• When done recursing, show those nodes why they are afraid – DELETE them!
• The DOM should have beautiful XAML in it.

I had you same the XPath in the dictionary to make nested objects work better. It depends what your objects are and how they are nested for me to be able to speak to that, however. good luck!