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Generating XML Root Node Having Colon-Via Serialization

Recently, I got a requirement to generate an XML on the fly with some defined schema. I know this requirement looks very simple at first sight, but actually, it was not.

The XML that was to be generated had a very specific format as it was supposed to be the input for some third-party tools. So, it means, it should be fully compliant with the prescribed XML node structure. Just have a look at the below schema.

<sl:RandomWindow xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
                 xmlns:sl="http://www.ShwetaBlogs.com/Window" 
                 xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.ShwetaBlogs.com/Window wwRandomWindow.xsd">
    <Title>First Window</Title>
    <Border>Single</Border>
</sl:RandomWindow>

Below are the classes I created for serialization purposes.

public class RandomWindow
{
    [XmlAttribute(Form = System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchemaForm.Qualified, Namespace = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance")]
    public string schemaLocation { get; set; }
    [XmlElement]
    public string Title { get; set; }
    [XmlElement]
    public string Border { get; set; }
}

By using the XmlElement and XmlAttribute classes, I was able to generate most of the required parts of the XML, as shown below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<RandomWindow xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.ShwetaBlogs.com/Window wwRandomWindow.xsd"
              xmlns:sl="http://www.ShwetaBlogs.com/Window"
              xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <Title>First Window</Title>
    <Border>Single</Border>
</RandomWindow>

But the only thing that didn’t come up correctly was the root node that is expected to be in the form <sl: RandomWindow>.

So, to achieve the root node with prefix and colon, I updated the code.

[XmlRoot("sl:RandomWindow")]
public class RandomWindow { ... }

But alas! It gave me some strange results. It converted the prefix to hexadecimal, as shown below. Then I thought, instead of providing a concrete prefix, let’s add namespace itself.

[XmlRoot("RandomWindow", Namespace = "http://www.ShwetaBlogs.com/Window")]  
public class RandomWindow { ...}  

And my result was a bit closer to what I needed, but not the exact one. Now, the issue remaining was the extra prefix in front of each element :(.

To resolve this issue, I tried various options provided by various blogs, but no luck. However, after spending hours, I was able to crack it with a "hit and try" formula. To hide namespaces at the element node level, I provided the namespace value as empty just like in the code shown below.

[XmlRoot("RandomWindow", Namespace = "http://www.ShwetaBlogs.com/Window")]
public class RandomWindow
{
    [XmlAttribute(Form = System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchemaForm.Qualified, Namespace = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance")]
    public string schemaLocation { get; set; }
    [XmlElement(Namespace = " ")]
    public string Title { get; set; }
    [XmlElement(Namespace = " ")]
    public string Border { get; set; }
}

And that did the trick for me. Finally, I was able to achieve the required format.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sl:RandomWindow xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.ShwetaBlogs.com/Window wwRandomWindow.xsd"
                xmlns:sl="http://www.ShwetaBlogs.com/Window"
                xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <Title xmlns=" ">First Window</Title>
    <Border xmlns=" ">Single</Border>
</sl:RandomWindow>

Although this issue was pretending to be very small, it ate up so much of my time. This is why I thought to share it here in hopes that it would be helpful for you and would save you time.

Happy troubleshooting !!!


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