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.
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!