How to serialize an object to XML without getting xmlns="..."?

Is there a way for me to serialize an object in .NET without the XML Namespaces automatically serializing also? It seems that by default .NET believes the XSI and XSD namespaces should be included, but I don't want them there.

Solution 1:

Ahh... nevermind. It's always the search after the question is posed that yields the answer. My object that is being serialized is obj and has already been defined. Adding an XMLSerializerNamespace with a single empty namespace to the collection does the trick.

In VB like this:

Dim xs As New XmlSerializer(GetType(cEmploymentDetail))
Dim ns As New XmlSerializerNamespaces()
ns.Add("", "")

Dim settings As New XmlWriterSettings()
settings.OmitXmlDeclaration = True

Using ms As New MemoryStream(), _
    sw As XmlWriter = XmlWriter.Create(ms, settings), _
    sr As New StreamReader(ms)
    xs.Serialize(sw, obj, ns)
    ms.Position = 0
    Console.WriteLine(sr.ReadToEnd())
End Using

in C# like this:

//Create our own namespaces for the output
XmlSerializerNamespaces ns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();

//Add an empty namespace and empty value
ns.Add("", "");

//Create the serializer
XmlSerializer slz = new XmlSerializer(someType);

//Serialize the object with our own namespaces (notice the overload)
slz.Serialize(myXmlTextWriter, someObject, ns);

Solution 2:

If you want to get rid of the extra xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" and xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema", but still keep your own namespace xmlns="http://schemas.YourCompany.com/YourSchema/", you use the same code as above except for this simple change:

//  Add lib namespace with empty prefix  
ns.Add("", "http://schemas.YourCompany.com/YourSchema/");   

Solution 3:

If you want to remove the namespace you may also want to remove the version, to save you searching I've added that functionality so the below code will do both.

I've also wrapped it in a generic method as I'm creating very large xml files which are too large to serialize in memory so I've broken my output file down and serialize it in smaller "chunks":

    public static string XmlSerialize<T>(T entity) where T : class
    {
        // removes version
        XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings();
        settings.OmitXmlDeclaration = true;

        XmlSerializer xsSubmit = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
        using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter())
        using (XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(sw, settings))
        {
            // removes namespace
            var xmlns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
            xmlns.Add(string.Empty, string.Empty);

            xsSubmit.Serialize(writer, entity, xmlns);
            return sw.ToString(); // Your XML
        }
    }