Adjust MVC 4 WebApi XmlSerializer to lose the nameSpace

Question

I'm working on a MVC WebAPI, that uses EF with POCO classes for storage. What I want to do is get rid of the namespace from the XML, so that the endpoints would return and accept xml objects without it. (json works just fine)

<ACCOUNT xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Platform.Services.AccountService.Data">
<id>22</id>
<City i:nil="true"/>
<Country i:nil="true"/>
<Email>[email protected]</Email>
<Phone i:nil="true"/> ...

I would like this to work

 <ACCOUNT>
    <id>22</id>
    <City i:nil="true"/>
    <Country i:nil="true"/>
    <Email>[email protected]</Email>
    <Phone i:nil="true"/> ...

Hopefully without having to decorate the POCO's with a bunch of attributes.

I've set up a test solution for this, and indeed, these methods are beeing hit (must be some other problem in my system). Anyways - the result that I get using this solutions is this:

<ArrayOfAccount>
<Account>
<id>22</id>
<name>TestAcc</name>
<parentid xmlns:d3p1="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" d3p1:nil="true"/>
<status_id xmlns:d3p1="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" d3p1:nil="true"/>
<Email>[email protected]</Email>
</Account>
</ArrayOfAccount>

Got rid of the schema on top, but the properties are now messed up :( Here's a link to a sample project

Answer 1

This answer here is spot on the mark Remove namespace in XML from ASP.NET Web API.\

If you don't want to decorate your POCO's at all use the 1st option:

config.Formatters.XmlFormatter.UseXmlSerializer = true;

If you use option 2, you may need to add a reference to System.Runtime.Serialization

Assuming a post like this with Accept set correct:

GET http:// ANY OLD SERVER/api/foos/5 Accept: application/xml

Controller

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Runtime.Serialization;
using System.Web.Http;

namespace CutomXmlFormater.Controllers
{
//[DataContract(Namespace = "")]
public class Foo
{
    //[DataMember]
    public string Bar { get; set; }
}

public class FoosController : ApiController
{
    // GET api/foos/5
    public Foo Get(int id)
    {
        return new Foo() { Bar = "Test" };
    }
}

}

Config (App_Start/WebApiConfig)

//(Use this is you don't go the data contact and model annotation route)
config.Formatters.XmlFormatter.UseXmlSerializer = true;

Result

Either (With annotation and data contact):

<Foo xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"><Bar>Test</Bar></Foo>

Or (with XML serialiser route):

<Foo xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"><Bar>Test</Bar></Foo>

Answer 2

Maybe you could try with this:

Replace default XmlFormatter with your own:

GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters.Add(new CustomXmlFormatter());
GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters.Remove(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters.XmlFormatter);

And impement it using XmlSerializer, with specifying empty namespace during serialization, like this:

public CustomXmlFormatter()
{
    SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/xml"));
    SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new MediaTypeHeaderValue("text/xml"));
    Encoding = new UTF8Encoding(false, true);
}

protected override bool CanReadType(Type type)
{
    if (type == (Type)null)
        throw new ArgumentNullException("type");

    if (type == typeof(IKeyValueModel))
        return false;

    return true;
}

protected override bool CanWriteType(Type type)
{
    return true;
}

protected override Task OnReadFromStreamAsync(Type type, Stream stream, HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext)
{
    return Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
            {
                using (var streamReader = new StreamReader(stream, Encoding))
                {
                    var serializer = new XmlSerializer(type);
                    return serializer.Deserialize(streamReader);
                }
            });
}

protected override Task OnWriteToStreamAsync(Type type, object value, Stream stream, HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext, System.Net.TransportContext transportContext)
{
    var serializer = new XmlSerializer(type);
    return Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
            {
                using (var streamWriter = new StreamWriter(stream, Encoding))
                {
                    XmlSerializerNamespaces ns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
                    ns.Add("", "");
                    serializer.Serialize(streamWriter, value, ns);
                }
            });
    }
}

Custom XML serializer was stolen from here, and as such is untested.

This should serialize objects w/o writing the namespace. I'm not sure if it will work OOTB for deserialization, you'd may have to experiment with XmlSerializer.Deserialize() overload that provides events and handle UnknownElement or UnknownNode event.