Effect of nillable=true

[Xia Lee]

What is I have an element like this :

<xsd:element name="abc" type="xsd:string" nillable="true"/>

Are these three right :

<abc nil="1"></abc>
<abc nil="true"></abc>
<abc>abcde</abc>

[Rinku Singh]

Yes they are right !

[Rodrigo Dinis]

It is a little bit tricky because you didn't declared the "nil" attribute in the element. The "nillable" attribute from the XML Schema is just to say if the element can or cannot to be without a value, empty. So from my point of view only the last is right.

[Peer Reynders]

See XML Schema Part 0: Primer Second Edition: 2.9 Nils

<abc nil="1"></abc>    <!-- Incorrect. The attribute value of xsi:nil has to be "true" -->
<abc nil="true"></abc> <!-- Incorrect. The namespace needs to be identified for the nil attribute -->
                            <!-- It is highly unlikely that the default namespace is "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" -->
<abc>abcde</abc>       <!-- Correct. The element is non-empty so the xsi:nil doesn't appear -->

Correct:

<!-- provided xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" -->
<abc xsi:nil="true"></abc> 
<abc xsi:nil="true" />
 
<!-- The following are simply empty - but not nil -->
<abc></abc> 
<abc/> 

NULL - The database's black hole

An area where empty and null mean different things and "nillable" comes into play
Web Services Programming Tips and Tricks: Array Gotcha - Null Array vs. Empty Array
[ November 26, 2008: Message edited by: Peer Reynders ]