XML file creation using XDocument in C#

Question

I have a List<string> "sampleList" which contains

Data1 Data2 Data3... 

The file structure is like

<file>    <name filename="sample"/>    <date modified ="  "/>    <info>      <data value="Data1"/>       <data value="Data2"/>      <data value="Data3"/>    </info> </file> 

I'm currently using XmlDocument to do this.

Example:

List<string> lst; XmlDocument XD = new XmlDocument(); XmlElement root = XD.CreateElement("file"); XmlElement nm = XD.CreateElement("name"); nm.SetAttribute("filename", "Sample"); root.AppendChild(nm); XmlElement date = XD.CreateElement("date"); date.SetAttribute("modified", DateTime.Now.ToString()); root.AppendChild(date); XmlElement info = XD.CreateElement("info"); for (int i = 0; i < lst.Count; i++)  {     XmlElement da = XD.CreateElement("data");     da.SetAttribute("value",lst[i]);     info.AppendChild(da); } root.AppendChild(info); XD.AppendChild(root); XD.Save("Sample.xml"); 

How can I create the same XML structure using XDocument?

Answer 1

LINQ to XML allows this to be much simpler, through three features:

• You can construct an object without knowing the document it's part of
• You can construct an object and provide the children as arguments
• If an argument is iterable, it will be iterated over

So here you can just do:

void Main() {     List<string> list = new List<string>     {         "Data1", "Data2", "Data3"     };      XDocument doc =       new XDocument(         new XElement("file",           new XElement("name", new XAttribute("filename", "sample")),           new XElement("date", new XAttribute("modified", DateTime.Now)),           new XElement("info",             list.Select(x => new XElement("data", new XAttribute("value", x)))           )         )       );      doc.Save("Sample.xml"); } 

I've used this code layout deliberately to make the code itself reflect the structure of the document.

If you want an element that contains a text node, you can construct that just by passing in the text as another constructor argument:

// Constructs <element>text within element</element> XElement element = new XElement("element", "text within element");