I have an XML document format from a legacy system that I have to support in a future application. I want to be able to both serialize and deserialize the XML between XML and C# objects, however, using the objects generated by xsd.exe, the C# serialization includes the xmlns:xsi..., xsi:... etc XML attributes on the root element of the document that gets generated. Is there anyway to disable this so that absolutely no XML attribute nodes get put out in the resulting XML ? The XML document should be elements only.
Duplicate? XmlSerializer: remove unnecessary xsi and xsd namespaces
Yes, use the XmlSerializerNamespaces class.
Example:
var s= new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(typeof(TypeToSerialize));
var ns= new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializerNamespaces();
ns.Add( "", "");
System.IO.StreamWriter writer= System.IO.File.CreateText(filePath);
s.Serialize(writer, objectToSerialize, ns);
writer.Close();
See also: XmlSerializer: remove unnecessary xsi and xsd namespaces
There is no way to force XML Serializer to ignore xsi attributes (unless you implement IXmlSerializable and force custom serialization or use XmlAttributeOverrides). However the only time xsi: attributes show up is when you have a nullable element. If you do need to use nullable elements you can of course post-process the XML to remove all xsi: occurences. However if you do this think about how you will deserialize the XML back into an object, if xsi:nil is missing on an element and the element is defined as a nullable integer you will run into an exception.
#Cheeso, please correct me if i am wrong.
I have the following code.
public class TestSer
{
public int? MyProperty { get; set; }
}
TestSer ser = new TestSer();
ser.MyProperty = null;
StringBuilder bldr = new StringBuilder();
var ns = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializerNamespaces();
ns.Add("", "");
XmlSerializer s = new XmlSerializer(typeof(TestSer));
using (StringWriter writer = new StringWriter(bldr))
{
s.Serialize(writer, ser, ns);
}
I get the following output.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<TestSer>
<MyProperty d2p1:nil="true" xmlns:d2p1="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" />
</TestSer>
This isn't exactly element only as the question asks for.
Related
When setting the InnerXml of an XmlElement having a default namespace, all tags without explicit namespaces are parsed as if they have xmlns="", instead of inheriting that XmlElement's default namespace (which is what happens when parsing a real XML document).
My question is: how to parse a complex XML string as a document fragment and assign it to an XmlElement, and inheriting the target XmlElement's namespace prefixes, default namespace, etc. when parsing that string?
Disclaimer:
I am totally aware of what XML namespaces are and what is the exact behavior of XmlElement.InnerXml regarding to XML namespaces. I'm not asking why XmlElement.InnerXml is doing what it currently does, or whether such behavior is good or bad. I'm asking if I can change this behavior or use some other techniques to achieve what I've described above.
I'm implementing some kind of XML template system, which allows users to insert some rather complex XML strings as fragments into another XML document. It will be insane to require users to always use explicit namespaces (the overhead of writing redundant namespace declarations can easily defeat the benefit of templating). I want a method to parse them and insert the resulting fragments into the main document as if they are literally copy-and-pasted into the target.
I'm aware that it is possible to preserve the default namespaces with pure DOM operations (like XmlDocument.CreateElement), but I don't want to manually implement an XML parser and convert XML strings into DOM operations.
I also don't want to do "serialize the whole XML document, do string manipulation, and parse it back" kind of things.
Is it possible?
As mentioned in this comment by Martin Honnen as well as this answer by Gideon Engelberth to Can I use predefined namespaces when loading an XDocument?, you can use an XmlParserContext to predefine a value for a namespace (including the default namespace) when parsing XML via XmlReader. Using an XmlReader configured with an appropriate context, you can load your inner XML directly into your XmlElement and and inherit any required namespaces from its scope.
To inherit just the default namespace, create the following extension methods:
public static partial class XmlNodeExtensions
{
public static void SetInnerXmlAndInheritDefaultNamespace(this XmlElement xmlElement, string innerXml)
{
using (var textReader = new StringReader(innerXml))
xmlElement.SetInnerXmlAndInheritDefaultNamespace(textReader);
}
public static void SetInnerXmlAndInheritDefaultNamespace(this XmlElement xmlElement, TextReader innerTextReader)
{
XmlNamespaceManager mgr = new XmlNamespaceManager(new NameTable());
mgr.AddNamespace("", xmlElement.GetNamespaceOfPrefix(""));
XmlParserContext ctx = new XmlParserContext(null, mgr, null, XmlSpace.Default);
using (var reader = XmlReader.Create(innerTextReader, new XmlReaderSettings { ConformanceLevel = ConformanceLevel.Fragment, CloseInput = false }, ctx))
using (var writer = xmlElement.CreateNavigator().AppendChild())
{
writer.WriteNode(reader, true);
}
}
}
To inherit all namespaces (the requirements in your question aren't entirely clear), create the following:
public static partial class XmlNodeExtensions
{
public static void SetInnerXmlAndInheritNamespaces(this XmlElement xmlElement, string innerXml)
{
using (var textReader = new StringReader(innerXml))
xmlElement.SetInnerXmlAndInheritNamespaces(textReader);
}
public static void SetInnerXmlAndInheritNamespaces(this XmlElement xmlElement, TextReader innerTextReader)
{
XmlNamespaceManager mgr = new XmlNamespaceManager(new NameTable());
var navigator = xmlElement.CreateNavigator();
foreach (var pair in navigator.GetNamespacesInScope(XmlNamespaceScope.ExcludeXml))
mgr.AddNamespace(pair.Key, pair.Value);
XmlParserContext ctx = new XmlParserContext(null, mgr, null, XmlSpace.Default);
using (var writer = navigator.AppendChild())
using (var reader = XmlReader.Create(innerTextReader, new XmlReaderSettings { ConformanceLevel = ConformanceLevel.Fragment, CloseInput = false }, ctx))
{
writer.WriteNode(reader, true);
}
}
}
Assuming xmlElement is the existing XmlElement to which you want to insert an innerXml string, you can do:
xmlElement.SetInnerXmlAndInheritDefaultNamespace(innerXml);
E.g. if your XML Document looks like:
<Root xmlns="defaultNameSpace" xmlns:d="dataNodeNamespace"><d:Data></d:Data></Root>
And you add the following XML to <d:Data>:
<ElementToAdd Id="10101"><InnerValue>my inner value</InnerValue></ElementToAdd><ElementToAdd Id="20202"><InnerValue>another inner value</InnerValue></ElementToAdd>
The result will be:
<Root xmlns="defaultNameSpace" xmlns:d="dataNodeNamespace">
<d:Data>
<ElementToAdd Id="10101">
<InnerValue>my inner value</InnerValue>
</ElementToAdd>
<ElementToAdd Id="20202">
<InnerValue>another inner value</InnerValue>
</ElementToAdd>
</d:Data>
</Root>
Demo fiddle here and here.
I've got a very complex binary search tree. It's node data should keep an object of custom KeyValue class. As a key there should be a string, and value is another tree, which data field contains an object of custom KeyValue class, where key is a string and value is string[].
I need to serialize and deserialize it, using XML serializer.
The problem is that serialization isn't done properly. XML file does not contain Nodes as elements, only their data.
Therefore, it can't be deserialized, a new tree's root is null.
Here is how I perform serialization.
XmlSerializer XMLserializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(RecursiveKeyValueTree<string, RecursiveKeyValueTree<string, string[]>>), extraTypes);
XmlSerializerNamespaces myNamespace = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
myNamespace.Add("", "");
using (FileStream serializationStream = File.Create("dictionaryTreeExample.xml"))
XMLserializer.Serialize(serializationStream, dictionaryTree, myNamespace);
RecursiveKeyValueTree<string, RecursiveKeyValueTree<string, string[]>> dictionaryTreeDeserialized;
using (FileStream deserializationStream = File.OpenRead("dictionaryTreeExample.xml"))
{
dictionaryTreeDeserialized = (RecursiveKeyValueTree<string, RecursiveKeyValueTree<string, string[]>>)XMLserializer.Deserialize(deserializationStream);
}
XML file:
My Add() method in the binary tree had an unnecessary check before inserting elements, thus, it prevented elements of the outer tree from being inserted.
I am writing a set of objects that must serialize to and from Xml, following a strict specification that I cannot change. One element in this specification can contain a mix of strings and elements in-line.
A simple example of this Xml output would be this:
<root>Leading text <tag>tag1</tag> <tag>tag2</tag></root>
Note the whitespace characters between the closing of the first tag, and the start of the second tag. Here are the objects that represents this structure:
[XmlRoot("root")]
public class Root
{
[XmlText(typeof(string))]
[XmlElement("tag", typeof(Tag))]
public List<object> Elements { get; set; }
//this is simply for the sake of example.
//gives us four objects in the elements array
public static Root Create()
{
Root root = new Root();
root.Elements.Add("Leading text ");
root.Elements.Add(new Tag() { Text = "tag1" });
root.Elements.Add(" ");
root.Elements.Add(new Tag() { Text = "tag2" });
return root;
}
public Root()
{
Elements = new List<object>();
}
}
public class Tag
{
[XmlText]
public string Text {get;set;}
}
Calling Root.Create(), and saving to a file using this method looks perfect:
public XDocument SerializeToXml(Root obj)
{
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Root));
XDocument doc = new XDocument();
using (var writer = doc.CreateWriter())
{
serializer.Serialize(writer, obj);
}
return doc;
}
Serialization looks exactly like the xml structure at the beginning of this post.
Now when I want to serialize an xml file back into a Root object, I call this:
public static Root FromFile(string file)
{
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Root));
XmlReaderSettings settings = new XmlReaderSettings();
XmlReader reader = XmlTextReader.Create(file, settings);
//whitespace gone here
Root root = serializer.Deserialize(reader) as Root;
return root;
}
The problem is here. The whitespace string is eliminated. When I call Root.Create(), there are four objects in the Elements array. One of them is a space. This serializes just fine, but when deserializing, there are only 3 objects in Elements. The whitespace string gets eliminated.
Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong? I've tried using xml:space="preserve", as well as a host of XmlReader, XmlTextReader, etc. variations. Note that when I use a StringBuilder to read the XmlTextReader, the xml contains the spaces as I'd expect. Only when calling Deserialize(stream) do I lose the spaces.
Here's a link to an entire working example. It's LinqPad friendly, just copy/paste: http://pastebin.com/8MkUQviB The example opens two files, one a perfect serialized xml file, the second being a deserialized then reserialized version of the first file. Note you'll have to reference System.Xml.Serialization.
Thanks for reading this novel. I hope someone has some ideas. Thank you!
It looks like a bug. Workaround seems to be replace all whitespaces and crlf in XML text nodes by
entities. Semantic equal entities (
) does not work.
<root>Leading text <tag>tag1</tag> <tag>tag2</tag></root>
is working for me.
I am working with C# (ASP.Net, MVC) and Newtonsoft for JSON serialization. I get an XDocument like the one below which I would like to have in JSON format, for the view.
<group>
<name>Group 1</name>
<description><p>Description</p></description>
<section>
..
</section>
<section>
..
</section>
</group>
I have an Extension like this
private static readonly JsonSerializer jSerializer = JsonSerializer.Create(new JsonSerializerSettings {});
public static string ToJson(this object obj) {
using (StringWriter writer = new StringWriter()) {
jSerializer.Serialize(writer, obj);
return writer.ToString();
}
}
The problem now is, that the description gets deserialized, so I have something like
... "description": { "p": "Description Text" }
which will be displayed as "[Object object]" when just posted as is.
Is there a way to set some JsonProperties for the XDocument (in general), without generating a completely deserialized class?
If not, is there a way to set some JsonProperty saying "Keep this as string, do not serialize any further"
If I were to use an XSD generated class for this, what "type" would I need to set? "anyType"?
Help would be appreciated,
Best regards.
I am adding this answer due to it's google search rank when looking up "c# convert xml to json XDocument".
string json = JsonConvert.SerializeXNode(xDocument);
This answer uses the more modern XNode vs XmlNode
Using Json.NET you can serialize an XML node directly to JSON using the following line:
string json = JsonConvert.SerializeXmlNode(xmlNode);
To convert your XDocument to XmlDocument see this question:
Converting XDocument to XmlDocument and vice versa
You can then use your converted XmlDocument as parameter for SerializeXmlNode() because it inherits from XmlNode.
New here, looking to get a little help with my XmlDocument. Is it possible to have string data in my root element AND remove the xmlns= attribute from being shown? I'm looking for something like this:
<Rulebase author=yadda datetime=bingbang version=1.x </Rulebase>
When I try to use my string data by doing:
xmlDom.AppendChild(xmlDom.CreateElement("", "Rulebase", data));
XmlElement xmlRoot = xmlDom.DocumentElement;
It ends up looking like this:
<Rulebase xmlns="version=0 author=username date=7/13/2011 </Rulebase>
and it also appends xmlns="" to all my other nodes.
The CreateElement overload you're using takes a prefix as it's first argument, local name as second, and namespace as third. If you don't want a namespace, don't use this overload. Just use the one that takes a local name as the one and only argument. Then add your data separately as child elements and attributes.
var xmlDom = new XmlDocument();
XmlElement root = xmlDom.CreateElement("Rulebase");
xmlDom.AppendChild(root);
XmlElement data = xmlDom.CreateElement("Data");
root.AppendChild(data);
XmlAttribute attribute = xmlDom.CreateAttribute("author");
attribute.Value = "username";
data.Attributes.Append(attribute);
attribute = xmlDom.CreateAttribute("date");
attribute.Value = XmlConvert.ToString(DateTime.Now, XmlDateTimeSerializationMode.RoundtripKind);
data.Attributes.Append(attribute);
Console.WriteLine(xmlDom.OuterXml);
Creates (formatting added)
<Rulebase>
<Data author="username" date="2011-07-13T22:44:27.5488853-04:00" />
</Rulebase>
Using XmlDocument to generate XML is pretty tedious though. There are many better ways in .NET, like XmlSerializer and DataContractSerializer. You can also use Linq-to-Xml and XElement. Or you can use an XmlWriter.Create(). Lots of options.