Serializing a Nullable in to XML

Question

I am trying to serialize a class several of the data-members are Nullable objects, here is a example

[XmlAttribute(\"AccountExpirationDate\")]
public Nullabl         


        

Answer 1

I was stuck into the similar problem. I had a datetime property (as XmlAttribute) in a class which was exposed in the WCF service.

Below is what I faced and the solution that worked for me : 1) XmlSerializer class was not serialising XmlAttribute of nullable type

[XmlAttribute]
public DateTime? lastUpdatedDate { get; set; }
Exception thrown : Cannot serialize member 'XXX' of type System.Nullable`1. 

2) Some posts suggest to replace [XmlAttribute] with [XmlElement(IsNullable =true)]. But this will serialize the Attribute as an Element which is totally useless. However it works fine for XmlElements

3) Some suggest to implement IXmlSerializable interface into your class, but that doesn't allow WCF service to be called from WCF consuming application. So this too does not work in this case.

Solution :

Don't mark property as nullable, instead use a ShouldSerializeXXX() method to put your constraint.

[XmlAttribute]
public DateTime lastUpdatedDate { get; set; }
public bool ShouldSerializelastUpdatedDate ()
{
   return this.lastUpdatedDate != DateTime.MinValue; 
   // This prevents serializing the field when it has value 1/1/0001       12:00:00 AM
}