Using XSD.exe for c# code gen, ignores empty nodes in XML?

Question

Maybe I'm not doing this correctly. But I'm using MusicXML, along with XSD.exe to generate the C# classes against the DTD.

According to the documentation, along with a sample xml file, the <NOTE> element contains an empty <CHORD> element, if the <NOTE> is a part of a <CHORD>. The code generated looks like this:

[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute("chord", typeof(empty))]

When I deserialize the XML into a c# object, it works great, but the <CHORD> seems to disappear. Does .NET just ignore the CHORD element in this sample XML?

  <note>
    <chord/>
    <pitch>
      <step>E</step>
      <alter>-1</alter>
      <octave>4</octave>
    </pitch>
    <duration>1</duration>
  </note>

Thanks!

Answer 1

Do you mean the chord element dissapears when you serialize to XML, as null elements don't serialize by default

If you want to render it as an empty element like

<chord />

you can set use the isnullable property XML Serialization and null value - C#

As linked in another question you might want to have a look at this article about the representation of null in XML Schema files:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/ws-tip-null/index.html