How to prevent blank xmlns attributes in output from .NET's XmlDocument?

.net, c#, xml, xml-namespaces, xmldocument

Solution

Thanks to Jeremy Lew's answer and a bit more playing around, I figured out how to remove blank `xmlns` attributes: pass in the root node's namespace when creating any child node you want not to have a prefix on. Using a namespace without a prefix at the root means that you need to use that same namespace on child elements for them to also not have prefixes.

Fixed Code:

XmlDocument xml = new XmlDocument();
xml.AppendChild(xml.CreateElement("root", "whatever:name-space-1.0"));
xml.DocumentElement.AppendChild(xml.CreateElement("loner", "whatever:name-space-1.0")); 
Console.WriteLine(xml.OuterXml);

Thanks everyone to all your answers which led me in the right direction!

Problem

When generating XML from XmlDocument in .NET, a blank `xmlns` attribute appears the first time an element without an associated namespace is inserted; how can this be prevented? Example: ``` XmlDocument xml = new XmlDocument(); xml.AppendChild(xml.CreateElement("root", "whatever:name-space-1.0")); xml.DocumentElement.AppendChild(xml.CreateElement("loner")); Console.WriteLine(xml.OuterXml); ``` Output: ``` <root xmlns="whatever:name-space-1.0"><loner xmlns="" /></root> ``` Desired Output: ``` <root xmlns="whatever:name-space-1.0"><loner /></root> ``` Is there a solution applicable to the `XmlDocument` code, not something that occurs after converting the document to a string with `OuterXml`? My reasoning for doing this is to see if I can match the standard XML of a particular protocol using XmlDocument-generated XML. The blank `xmlns` attribute may not break or confuse a parser, but it's also not present in any usage that I've seen of this protocol.

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