>>I am returning a cursor from FoxPro using CursorToXML(lcAlias,"lcXML",1,0,0,"1"), then converting the XML to a DataSet in .NET. It works well unless the cursor includes empty dates. .NET doesn't like them. It wants NULLs, meaning the field element is excluded altogether in the XML. I can work around the issue by not including a schema, but that treats everything as a string and doesn't meet my needs. I don't want to replace the empty date fields with NULL in FoxPro. I could strip the empty fields out of the XML on the .NET side before loading the XML into a DataSet, which is ok, but I'm wondering if there is a better solution? I have read Message #1199897, but that didn't work for me.
>>
>>Thanks.
>
>Is their any reason that you don't open the VFP table with .NET and create the dataset from the VFP table?

Yes. The cursor is often the result of processing data in FoxPro. It is quite a bit of existing code, so porting it over is not feasible at this time. For now, the best solution I could find is to modify the XML in VFP before returning it to .NET.

* Include schema
CursorToXML(lcAlias,"lcXML",1,0,0,"1")

* .NET Dataset doesn't allow FoxPro empty dates when schema included, so strip them out
* Allow null values in date fields
lcXML = Strtran(lcXML, [type="xsd:date"], [type="xsd:date" minOccurs="0"])
lcXML = Strtran(lcXML, [type="xsd:dateTime"], [type="xsd:dateTime" minOccurs="0"])
* Replace empty dates with NULL
lnFieldCnt = AFields(laFields, lcAlias)
For lnField = 1 to lnFieldCnt
	If InList(laFields[lnField, 2], "D", "T")
		lcField = laFields[lnField, 1]
		lcXML = Strtran(lcXML, "<" + Lower(lcField) + "/>", "")
	EndIf 
EndFor 

Return lcXML