XML Serialization empty collections not self closing

Question

Wondering if anyone can help me with this annoying but trivial (in terms of need) question. I have an object which has inside it a collection of object

 public class OuterClass
  {
    InnerClasses innerClasses= new InnerClasses();
     public InnerClasses InnerClasses
    {
      get {return innerClasses; }
    }
    public string Name
   {
     get;set;
   }
  }

  public class InnerClasses:List<InnerClass>
  {

  }
  public class <InnerClass>
  {

  }

basically my problem I'm experiencing is that if I pass it through an xml serializer

    var outer = new OuterClass(){Name="Name"}
    var xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer(GetType());
    var stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
    var stringWriter = new StringWriter(stringBuilder);    
    xmlSerializer.Serialize(stringWriter, this);
    return stringBuilder.ToString();

I'm wondering why when I have no inner classes it puts out

<OuterClass>
 <Name>Name</Name>
 <InnerClasses ></InnerClasses>
</OuterClass>

why does it not put InnerClasses as a self closed tag ?

I realize the code above will put but I can't put the full actual code listing. (not much use I know) I'm just looking for pointers as to what could cause it.

I can't for the life of me work out why it's not doing this by default.

Many thanks for any input as to where to look.

Answer 1

I've noticed the same thing all the time, but as far as I've found it's just the way the Serialization class was implemented. They simply chose to not use self closing tags. Hopefully this will be changed in future implementations.