gomasch Development Notes

Old stuff: The .NET XMLSerializer is quite powerful, but not perfectly documented. Hmm.

I found for example the support for default attribute values *is* there and also more or less complete!

What we want: A class with an instance variable serialized to an attribute:

• Its Xml-Attribute representation shall only be written into the XML file when the actual value is different to the default one.
  Solution: specify default with System.ComponentModel.DefaultValueAttribute
• The value shall be restored when reading an xml file even if the value is not present.
  Solution: add a default constructor and set the value yourself.

Untested Example:

[Serializable]
[XmlRoot(ElementName="FILE")]
public class Example
{
    [XmlAttribute("filename")]
    [System.ComponentModel.DefaultValueAttribute(FileNameDefault)]
    public string FileName; 

    public const string FileNameDefault = "default.xml";

    public Example()
    {
        FileName = FileNameDefault;
    }
}

Remember: to control what's happening you can also always take a look at the code generated by the XMLSerializer.