Using XML decorations to specify default values during de-serialization

I have a problem deserializing some XML; the XML supplied by a third party is quite verbose, so if there is no value set for an particular element, it will supply and empty element (e.g. <element1 />).

This is a problem for certain elements, for example, those that are meant to store integers. I have control over the third party, so I could either get them to specify a default value (<myinteger>0</myinteger>) or I can get them to omit these elements entirely. Both of these should avoid the problem.

However, there may be situations in future, where we don't have so much control - in which case, is there a way of specifying, perhaps via a decoration, a default value?

    [XmlElement("myinteger")=0???]
  开发者_开发知识库  public int MyInteger
    {
        get
        {
            return myInteger;
        }
        set
        {
            myInteger= value;
        }
    }

XmlSerializer does support [DefaultValue], but it uses it during serialization. During deserialization, it simply runs the constructor, then takes incoming values and applies them. A common approach, then, is to use the constructor (or field-initializers):

public Foo() {
    Bar = 4;
}
[DefaultValue(4), XmlAttribute("bar")]
public int Bar {get;set;}

However; XmlSerializer's interpretation of this is not "supply an empty element" - but rather "omit the element(/attribute)". Even int? doesn't map to "empty". To handle empty elements, you would have to handle it as a string. Which is ugly.

Decoration using [DefaultValue] doesn't seem to be complete solution since it doesnt work always. Another simple Solution (May not be clean)

public string _sourceSubFolderName;
    [DefaultValueAttribute("")]
    [XmlElement("SourceSubFolderName")]
    public string SourceSubFolderName
    {
        get { return string.IsNullOrEmpty(_sourceSubFolderName) ? 
               string.Empty : _sourceSubFolderName; }
        set { _sourceSubFolderName = value; }
    }