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XML deserialize raw empty-element #80699
Description
Description
I need to process some XML input which has HTML code in some tags. For these tags I want the raw content to process it later. I followed this answer on Stackoverflow and used XmlElement as member which works fine in most cases. The only problem I'm facing are self closing tags.
Reproduction Steps
using System.IO;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
public class Program
{
public static void Main()
{
var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Root));
var obj1 = serializer.Deserialize(new StringReader(@"<Root><Description><p>test</p></Description><Name>Test</Name></Root>"));
// Description: "Element, Name=\"p\""
// Name: "Test"
var obj2 = serializer.Deserialize(new StringReader(@"<Root><Description></Description><Name>Test</Name></Root>"));
// Description: null
// Name: "Test"
var obj3 = serializer.Deserialize(new StringReader(@"<Root><Description/><Name>Test</Name></Root>"));
// Description: "Element, Name=\"Name\""
// Name: null
}
public class Root
{
public XmlElement Description { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
}
}Expected behavior
obj2 and obj3 should be equal.
Actual behavior
obj1 and obj2 are ok (obj2.Description == "" would be better) but in obj3 the Description member is greedy and contains the Name part.
Regression?
No response
Known Workarounds
No response
Configuration
I have tested it on .NET 5 and .NET 7 without differences.
Other information
No response
Reacted by Tim Sirmovics and Copilot
Activity
StephenMolloy commentedon Feb 16, 2023
Self-closing tags are not valid Xml. Thus, XmlSerializer does not know how to handle them. If you need to embed html inside an xml document, you will need to Xml-Encode the html or wrap it in CData.
ondrejtucny commentedon Feb 17, 2023
What the OP actually means is an empty-element tag as per syntax rule [44], section 3.1 of the XML 1.1 Specification. It is clear from the example provided.
It actually is a bug in XmlSerializer and/or the underlying infrastructure.
[-]XML deserialize self closing raw element[/-][+]XML deserialize raw empty-element[/+]