How to prevent blank xmlns attributes in output fr

Question

When generating XML from XmlDocument in .NET, a blank xmlns attribute appears the first time an element without an associated namespace is inserted; how can this be prevented?

Example:

XmlDocument xml = new XmlDocument();
xml.AppendChild(xml.CreateElement("root",
    "whatever:name-space-1.0"));
xml.DocumentElement.AppendChild(xml.CreateElement("loner"));
Console.WriteLine(xml.OuterXml);

Output:

<root xmlns="whatever:name-space-1.0"><loner xmlns="" /></root>

Desired Output:

<root xmlns="whatever:name-space-1.0"><loner /></root>

Is there a solution applicable to the XmlDocument code, not something that occurs after converting the document to a string with OuterXml?

My reasoning for doing this is to see if I can match the standard XML of a particular protocol using XmlDocument-generated XML. The blank xmlns attribute may not break or confuse a parser, but it's also not present in any usage that I've seen of this protocol.

Answer 1

Since root is in an unprefixed namespace, any child of root that wants to be un-namespaced has to be output like your example. The solution would be to prefix the root element like so:

<w:root xmlns:w="whatever:name-space-1.0">
   <loner/>
</w:root>

code:

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
XmlElement root = doc.CreateElement( "w", "root", "whatever:name-space-1.0" );
doc.AppendChild( root );
root.AppendChild( doc.CreateElement( "loner" ) );
Console.WriteLine(doc.OuterXml);

Answer 2

I've solved the problem by using the Factory Pattern. I created a factory for XElement objects. As parameter for the instantiation of the factory I've specified a XNamespace object. So, everytime a XElement is created by the factory the namespace will be added automatically. Here is the code of the factory:

internal class XElementFactory
{
    private readonly XNamespace currentNs;

    public XElementFactory(XNamespace ns)
    {
        this.currentNs = ns;
    }

    internal XElement CreateXElement(String name, params object[] content)
    {
        return new XElement(currentNs + name, content);
    }
}

Answer 3

Thanks to Jeremy Lew's answer and a bit more playing around, I figured out how to remove blank xmlns attributes: pass in the root node's namespace when creating any child node you want not to have a prefix on. Using a namespace without a prefix at the root means that you need to use that same namespace on child elements for them to also not have prefixes.

Fixed Code:

XmlDocument xml = new XmlDocument();
xml.AppendChild(xml.CreateElement("root", "whatever:name-space-1.0"));
xml.DocumentElement.AppendChild(xml.CreateElement("loner", "whatever:name-space-1.0")); 
Console.WriteLine(xml.OuterXml);

Thanks everyone to all your answers which led me in the right direction!

Answer 4

Yes you can prevent the XMLNS from the XmlElement . First Creating time it is coming : like that

<trkpt lat="30.53597" lon="-97.753324" xmlns="">
    <ele>249.118774</ele>
    <time>2006-05-05T14:34:44Z</time>
</trkpt>

Change the code : And pass xml namespace like this

C# code:

XmlElement bookElement = xdoc.CreateElement("trkpt", "http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1");
bookElement.SetAttribute("lat", "30.53597");
bookElement.SetAttribute("lon", "97.753324");

Answer 5

If possible, create a serialization class then do:

XmlSerializerNamespaces ns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
ns.Add("", "");
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(yourType);
serializer.Serialize(xmlTextWriter, someObject, ns);

It's safer, and you can control the namespaces with attributes if you really need more control.

Answer 6

This is a variant of JeniT's answer (Thank you very very much btw!)

XmlElement new_element = doc.CreateElement("Foo", doc.DocumentElement.NamespaceURI);

This eliminates having to copy or repeat the namespace everywhere.