XML Serialization - Disable rendering root element of array

Can I somehow disable rendering of root element of collection?

This class with serialization attributes:

[XmlRoot(ElementName="SHOPITEM", Namespace="")]
public class ShopItem
{
    [XmlElement("PRODUCTNAME")]
    public string ProductName { get; set; }       
    
    [XmlArrayItem("VARIANT")]
    public List<ShopItem> Variants { get; set; }
}

generates this XML:

<SHOPITEM xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
      <PRODUCTNAME>test</PRODUCTNAME>
      <Variants>
          <VARIANT>
              <PRODUCTNAME>hi 1</PRODUCTNAME>
          </VARIANT>
          <VARIANT>
              <PRODUCTNAME>hi 2</PRODUCTNAME>
          </VARIANT>           
      </Variants>        
</SHOPITEM>

I don't want <Variants> element here. What must I do?

Also I don't need xsi and xsd namespaces in root element...

Solution 1:

To disable rendering of root element of collection, you must replace the attribute [XmlArrayItem] with [XmlElement] in your code.

For removing the xsi and xsd namespaces, create an XmlSerializerNamespaces instance with an empty namespace and pass it when you need to serialize your object.

Take a look on this example:

[XmlRoot("SHOPITEM")]
public class ShopItem
{
    [XmlElement("PRODUCTNAME")]
    public string ProductName { get; set; }

    [XmlElement("VARIANT")] // was [XmlArrayItem]
    public List<ShopItem> Variants { get; set; }
}

// ...

ShopItem item = new ShopItem()
{
    ProductName = "test",
    Variants    = new List<ShopItem>()
    {
        new ShopItem{ ProductName = "hi 1" },
        new ShopItem{ ProductName = "hi 2" }
    }
};

// This will remove the xsi/xsd namespaces from serialization
XmlSerializerNamespaces ns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
ns.Add("", "");

XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(ShopItem));
ser.Serialize(Console.Out, item, ns);  // Inform the XmlSerializerNamespaces here

I got this output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ibm850"?>
<SHOPITEM>
  <PRODUCTNAME>test</PRODUCTNAME>
  <VARIANT>
    <PRODUCTNAME>hi 1</PRODUCTNAME>
  </VARIANT>
  <VARIANT>
    <PRODUCTNAME>hi 2</PRODUCTNAME>
  </VARIANT>
</SHOPITEM>

Solution 2:

Replace [XmlArrayItem("VARIANT")] with [XmlElement("VARIANT")].