Go, encoding / xml: How can I marshal self-closing elements?

Question

I am writing XML from the following structure:

type OrderLine struct { LineNumber string `xml:"LineNumber"` Product string `xml:"Product"` Ref string `xml:"Ref"` Quantity string `xml:"Quantity"` Price string `xml:"Price"` LineTotalGross string `xml:"LineTotalGross"` } 

If the Ref field is empty, I would like this element to be displayed, but be self-closing, i.e.

 <Ref /> 

and not:

 <Ref></Ref> 

AFAIK, these two are semantically equivalent, but I would prefer a self-closing tag, since it corresponded to conclusions from other systems. Is it possible?

Answer 1

I found a way to do this “crack” the marshal’s package, but I haven’t tested it. If you want me to show you the link, let me now, and then post it in a comment to this answer.

I made the code manually:

 package main import ( "encoding/xml" "fmt" "regexp" "strings" ) type ParseXML struct { Person struct { Name string `xml:"Name"` LastName string `xml:"LastName"` Test string `xml:"Abc"` } `xml:"Person"` } func main() { var err error var newPerson ParseXML newPerson.Person.Name = "Boot" newPerson.Person.LastName = "Testing" var bXml []byte var sXml string bXml, err = xml.Marshal(newPerson) checkErr(err) sXml = string(bXml) r, err := regexp.Compile(`<([a-zA-Z0-9]*)><(\\|\/)([a-zA-Z0-9]*)>`) checkErr(err) matches := r.FindAllString(sXml, -1) fmt.Println(sXml) if len(matches) > 0 { r, err = regexp.Compile("<([a-zA-Z0-9]*)>") for i := 0; i < len(matches); i++ { xmlTag := r.FindString(matches[i]) xmlTag = strings.Replace(xmlTag, "<", "", -1) xmlTag = strings.Replace(xmlTag, ">", "", -1) sXml = strings.Replace(sXml, matches[i], "<"+xmlTag+" />", -1) } } fmt.Println("") fmt.Println(sXml) } func checkErr(chk error) { if chk != nil { panic(chk) } }