Xml serialization - Hide null values

Question

You can create a function with the pattern ShouldSerialize{PropertyName} which tells the XmlSerializer if it should serialize the member or not.

For example, if your class property is called MyNullableInt you could have

public bool ShouldSerializeMyNullableInt() 
{
  return MyNullableInt.HasValue;
}

Here is a full sample

public class Person
{
  public string Name {get;set;}
  public int? Age {get;set;}
  public bool ShouldSerializeAge()
  {
    return Age.HasValue;
  }
}

Serialized with the following code

Person thePerson = new Person(){Name="Chris"};
XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Person));
StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
xs.Serialize(sw, thePerson);

Results in the followng XML - Notice there is no Age

<Person xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <Name>Chris</Name>
</Person>

Additionally to what Chris Taylor wrote: if you have something serialized as an attribute, you can have a property on your class named {PropertyName}Specified to control if it should be serialized. In code:

public class MyClass
{
    [XmlAttribute]
    public int MyValue;

    [XmlIgnore]
    public bool MyValueSpecified;
}

It exists a property called XmlElementAttribute.IsNullable

If the IsNullable property is set to true, the xsi:nil attribute is generated for class members that have been set to a null reference.

The following example shows a field with the XmlElementAttribute applied to it, and the IsNullable property set to false.

public class MyClass
{
   [XmlElement(IsNullable = false)]
   public string Group;
}

You can have a look to other XmlElementAttribute for changing names in serialization etc.

You can define some default values and it prevents the fields from being serialized.

    [XmlElement, DefaultValue("")]
    string data;

    [XmlArray, DefaultValue(null)]
    List<string> data;