Populating an XML "Template" programmatically C#

Question

What I am trying to do is find placeholders in an xml and replace them. Jinja2 did this in Python, but I am looking for something similar in C#. Essentially what I want to do is take this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Data>
  <Title>{{ myTitle }}</Title>
  <Comp>
  {% for item in compItems %}  <CompItem>
      <CompItemConfig>{{ item.config }}</CompItemConfig>
    </CompItem>
  </Comp>
{% endfor %}
</Data>

And programmatically turn it into:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Data>
  <Title>Brown Fox</Title>
  <Comp>
    <CompItem>
      <CompItemConfig>QUICK</CompItemConfig>
    </CompItem>
    <CompItem>
      <CompItemConfig>JUMPS</CompItemConfig>
    </CompItem>
    <CompItem>
      <CompItemConfig>NOT LAZY</CompItemConfig>
    </CompItem>
  </Comp>
</Data>

For some reference, a quick example of how I think it should work would be:

Dictionary<string, string> myDictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>();
myDictionary.Add("myTitle", "Brown Fox");
myDictionary.Add("compItem", "QUICK");
myDictionary.Add("compItem", "JUMPS");
myDictionary.Add("compItem", "NOT LAZY");
FillTemplate("C:\myTemplate.xml", myDictionary);

Any help at all would be great. Thank you!

Answer 1

I know its late, but I really needed what you are asking for here, so I made this https://github.com/beto-rodriguez/Templator the markup is a little bit different but it should work the same, if you are familiar with angularJs you wont have any problems to use it.

I went for this method because I needed to share the template with more users, you generate a template and can share it to print labels (in my case)

here is an example

C#

var compiler = new Compiler()
            .AddKey("name", "Excel")
            .AddKey("width", 100)
            .AddKey("height", 500)
            .AddKey("bounds", new[] {10, 0, 10, 0})
            .AddKey("elements", new []
            {
                new { name = "John", age= 10 },
                new { name = "Maria", age= 57 },
                new { name = "Mark", age= 23 },
                new { name = "Edit", age= 82 },
                new { name = "Susan", age= 37 }
            });

var compiled = compiler.CompileXml(@"C:\...\myXml.xml")

XLM Source

<document>
  <name>my name is {{name}}</name>
  <width>{{width}}</width>
  <height>{{height}}</height>
  <area>{{width*height}}</area>
  <padding>
    <bound sxRepeat="bound in bounds">{{bound}}</bound>
  </padding>
  <content>
    <element sxRepeat="element in elements" sxIf="element.age > 25">
      <name>{{element.name}}</name>
      <age>{{element.age}}</age>
    </element>
  </content> 
</document>

Compiled

<document>
  <name>my name is Excel</name>
  <width>100</width>
  <height>500</height>
  <area>50000</area>
  <padding>
    <bound>10</bound>
    <bound>0</bound>
    <bound>10</bound>
    <bound>0</bound>
  </padding>
  <content>
    <element>
      <name>Maria</name>
      <age>57</age>
    </element>
    <element>
      <name>Edit</name>
      <age>82</age>
    </element>
    <element>
      <name>Susan</name>
      <age>37</age>
    </element>
  </content>
</document>

you can install it from Nuget too:

Install-Package SuperXml