.NET XML Serialization: Namespace Prefix Control

.NET provides two main XML serialization mechanisms: DataContractSerializer and XmlSerializer. However, the namespace prefixes they generate by default are managed by internal mechanisms, which limit the need for custom prefixes.

Use XmlSerializerNamespaces

If you need to control namespace alias, the XmlSerializerNamespaces class is ideal. It allows explicitly specifying alias for a specific namespace in serialized XML.

The following code example shows how to control namespace alias using XmlSerializerNamespaces:

[XmlRoot("Node", Namespace = "http://flibble")]
public class MyType
{
    [XmlElement("childNode")]
    public string Value { get; set; }
}

static class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        XmlSerializerNamespaces ns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
        ns.Add("myNamespace", "http://flibble");
        XmlSerializer xser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyType));
        xser.Serialize(Console.Out, new MyType(), ns);
    }
}

This code assigns the alias "myNamespace" to the "http://flibble" namespace. The serialized XML output is as follows:

something in here

Use XmlAttributeOverrides

runtime changes the namespace dynamically, and you can use the XmlAttributeOverrides class. It allows overriding the default namespace settings for properties of a specific type.

For example, the following code demonstrates how to change the namespace using XmlAttributeOverrides:

XmlAttributeOverrides ovrd = new XmlAttributeOverrides();
ovrd.Add(typeof(MyType), "childNode", new XmlAttributeOverrides()
{
    { typeof(XmlElementAttribute), new XmlElementAttribute("childNode", "http://alternateNamespace") }
});

XmlSerializer xser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyType), ovrd);
xser.Serialize(Console.Out, new MyType());

This code overrides the default namespace of the childNode property, pointing it to "http://alternateNamespace".