Should I generate XML as a string in C#?

Question

When generating XML in C#, Is there a problem with generating it as a string? In the past I've found generating XML programatically very verbose and convoluted. Creating the xml through string concatenation/a string builder seems much easier but, it feels like bad practice.
Should I generate XML as a string?

Answer 1

The XDocument, XElement and XAttribute classes make xml generation in C# much easier to do. Than using the XmlDocument or XmlWriter.

As an example, to produce this:

<RootElement>
    <ChildElement Attribute1="Hello" Attribute2="World" />
    <ChildElement Attribute1="Foo" Attribute2="Bar" />
</RootElement>

You can do this:

XDocument xDocument = new XDocument(
    new XElement("RootElement",
        new XElement("ChildElement",
            new XAttribute("Attribute1", "Hello"),
            new XAttribute("Attribute2", "World")
        ),
        new XElement("ChildElement",
            new XAttribute("Attribute1", "Foo"),
            new XAttribute("Attribute2", "Bar")
        )
    )
);

Answer 2

Have you tryed Linq to Xml? it is not very verbose:

XElement xml = new XElement("contacts",
                    new XElement("contact", 
                        new XAttribute("id", "1"),
                        new XElement("firstName", "first"),
                        new XElement("lastName", "last")
                    ),
                    new XElement("contact", 
                        new XAttribute("id", "2"),
                        new XElement("firstName", "first2"),
                        new XElement("lastName", "last2")
                    )
                );
Console.Write(xml);

Answer 3

Before you think about generating XML using string concatenation instead of a proper library, please go and read the XML specification. Pay particular attention to niceties such as charsets and character references.

You can do it now. I'll wait.

Now ask yourself - do you really want to have to ensure that your concatenated string is valid according to all those rules and write all the helper functions yourself, or do you want to use a well tested library where all that logic has been encapsulated for you?

Good.

Glad that's sorted.