How to read XML into a DataTable?

Question

I have some XML in a string in memory exactly like this:

<symbols>
  <symbol>EURCHF</symbol>
  <symbol>EURGBP</symbol>
  <symbol>EURJPY</symbol>
  <symbol>EURUSD</symbol>
</symbols>

I want to read this into a DataTable. I am doing it like this:

DataTable dt = new DataTable();
dt.TableName = "symbols";
dt.Columns.Add("symbol");

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(symbols))
{
    dt.ReadXml(new StringReader(symbols));
}

However when I check the number of rows, the DataTable ends up having zero rows. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

I've been searching for a easy way to do the same for some time too, but never really found what I actually wanted. Here's one solution I came across. It works, but I don't really like it as I first have to write the file into a DataSet and then put the created DataSet-Table into a DataTable.

Anyway, here's the code:

DataSet ds = new DataSet();
ds.ReadXml(path);
DataTable newDataTable = ds.Tables[0];

I also tried .ReadXml on my DataTable but that always threw an Exception.

I'm not happy with this solution, but it at least works.

Answer 2

Another way:

public DataTable ReadXML(string yourPath)
        {
            DataTable table = new DataTable("Item");
            try
            {
                DataSet lstNode = new DataSet();
                lstNode.ReadXml(yourPath);
                table = lstNode.Tables["Item"];
                return table;
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                return table;
            }
        }

And here's XML format:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<db>
  <Item>
    <Id>222</Id>
    <OldCode>ZA</OldCode>
    <NewCode>ZAF</NewCode>
    <Name>Africa (South )</Name>
  </Item>
</db>