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; }

}

All of the types are nullable because I want minimal data stored when serializing an object of this type. However, when it is serialized with only "a" populated, I get the following xml

<MyClass ...>

    <a>3</a>

    <b xsi:nil="true" />

    <c xsi:nil="true" />

</MyClass>

How do I set this up to only get xml for the non null properties? The desired output would be

<MyClass ...>

    <a>3</a>

</MyClass>

I want to exclude these null values because there will be several properties and this is getting stored in a database (yeah, thats not my call) so I want to keep the unused data minimal.

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Answer 1

I suppose you could create an XmlWriter that filters out all elements with an xsi:nil attribute, and passes all other calls to the underlying true writer.

How to exclude null properties when using XmlSerializer

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