Deserialization of null string

Question

I'd like to deserialize XML document to a POCO object. But I'm receiving unexpected result. Actually I need to get on output null value for Country property, but it has value with String.Empty.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ZIP xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <ZIP>11111</ZIP>
  <CITY>111</CITY>
  <STATE>UT</STATE>
  <COUNTRY xs:Nil="true" />
</ZIP>

Properties looks like:

[XmlElement(IsNullable = true)]
public string ZIP { get; set; }

[XmlElement(IsNullable = true)]
public string CITY { get; set; }

[XmlElement(IsNullable = true)]
public string STATE { get; set; }

[XmlElement(IsNullable = true)]
public string COUNTRY { get; set; }

I know that I can put some hooks with custom properties or implement IXmlSerializable, but it is just one from hundred of XML documents and POCO classes. Is there any generic solution?

Answer 1

Now try it with the correct namespace; xs should here be an alias to "xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance", and it should be xs:nil, not xs:Nil.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ZIP xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <ZIP>11111</ZIP>
  <CITY>111</CITY>
  <STATE>UT</STATE>
  <COUNTRY xs:nil="true" />
</ZIP>