dataSet.writeXml does not write an empty tag if the field was empty C#

Question

Hi there,

I want to create a XML of my DataSet using the .writeXml-function. If an entry in my DataSet was null, i would like to have an empty tag instead of a missing tag:

example how it should look like if John had no age:

  <MyDataSet>
    <ID>8613458</ID>
    <AW_ID>37534778</AW_ID>
    <NAME>Peter</NAME>
    <AGE>22</AGE>
  </MyDataSet>
  <MyDataSet>
    <ID>8613459</ID>
    <AW_ID>37534779</AW_ID>
    <NAME>John</NAME>
    <AGE></AGE>
  </MyDataSet>

example how it looks like right now:

  <MyDataSet>
    <ID>8613458</ID>
    <AW_ID>37534778</AW_ID>
    <NAME>Peter</NAME>
    <AGE>22</AGE>
  </MyDataSet>
  <MyDataSet>
    <ID>8613459</ID>
    <AW_ID>37534779</AW_ID>
    <NAME>John</NAME>
  </MyDataSet>

Do you know what I need to do? Thanks for your help!!

Answer 1

I don't think you can change so that it writes empty values if they are NULL since NULL is different from empty.
However, if the datatype of age is a string, just go through the dataset and change any NULLs to empty strings before writing it to XML and you'd get the effect you want.