How to ignore a nullable property from serialization if it is null or empty?

Question

I have a class which is used for Xml Serialization.

Inside which I have a nullable property which is decorated with XmlAttribute:

 [XmlAttribute(\"la         


        

Answer 1

I know this topic is old. This is the solution I came with. A class which encapsulates the type, and has implicit casting to the type. When serializing, the member variable can be marked with IsNullable = false without getting compiler errors, and blocking it from being serialized when null.

public class Optional where T : struct, IComparable
{
    public Optional(T valueObject)
    {
        Value = valueObject;
    }

    public Optional()
    {
    }

    [XmlText]
    public T Value { get; set; }

    public static implicit operator T(Optional objectToCast)
    {
        return objectToCast.Value;
    }

    public static implicit operator Optional(T objectToCast)
    {
        return new Optional(objectToCast);
    }
}

Then use it in your class

[Serializable]
[XmlRoot(ElementName = "foo")]
public class foo
{
   [XmlElement(ElementName = "myInteger", isNullable = false)]
   Optional myInt;
}

You can do things like

        myFoo.myInt = 7;
        int j = 8 + myFoo.myInt;

For all purposes it's an int. For serialization purposes, it can be null and blocked from being serialized.