How to exclude null properties when using XmlSerializer

Question

I\'m serializing a class like this

public MyClass
{
    public int? a { get; set; }
    public int? b { get; set; }
    public int? c { get; set; }
}
         


        

Answer 1

Yet Another Solution: regex to the rescue, use \s+<\w+ xsi:nil="true" \/> to remove all null properties from a string containing XML. I agree, not the most elegant solution, and only works if you only have to serialize. But that was all I needed today, and I don't wanted to add {Foo}Specified properties for all the properties that are nullable.

public string ToXml()
{
    string result;

    var serializer = new XmlSerializer(this.GetType());

    using (var writer = new StringWriter())
    {
        serializer.Serialize(writer, this);
        result = writer.ToString();
    }

    serializer = null;

    // Replace all nullable fields, other solution would be to use add PropSpecified property for all properties that are not strings
    result = Regex.Replace(result, "\\s+<\\w+ xsi:nil=\"true\" \\/>", string.Empty);

    return result;
}