Working On XML in C Sharp

If you are intending to build and alter xml files, or if perhaps you might want to deal with XML and C#, you might like to look into .NET, an excellent tool that provides superb and really simple to use amenities for working with xml files.

The advantages utilizing .NET and XML are further improved by using a set of Linq classes and so you may possibly make use of them in more general circumstances, which is great if you are not that expert in XML as it makes handling XML much more simpler, especially if you are a newbie.

What's specially interesting about Linq is that it uses a back to basics approach regarding managing XML compared to other standard protocols like Xpath, DOM, SAX etc because these protocols tend to specialise or concentrate on just one specific part of XML, as opposed to Linq provides a more general and basic way to working with XML.

Through an illustration, let's have a look at how Linq addresses a complicated data composition like a tree through XElement.

There are two core XML tags in XElement, and , basically an opening and closing tag.

The principles are extremely clear-cut and common with other markup languages like html, tags have to be in corresponding pairs and you can nest tags So one example is if you have tag opened with , you need a closing tag .

As a side note, you can even use an XML C# tool to create C# code out of your xml or xml schema, that is great for novices or if you want to save time and have correct, error free code.

The only exception to the matched pair guideline is if you use an own closing tag like this is a tag that ends itself.

So working with tags in XElement it is quite easy and even simple to create a tree like structure, you may also represent your tree in a program through a class.

The main point is always that XElement encompasses a Nodes collection which can be utilized to store an element's child elements.

The whole idea about nesting XElements within XElements is rather simple but you also can repeat this in another, more elaborate means, utilizing anything called an Add method or applying an Add method in a single call.

The following example can demonstrate this;

(colour2,colour3);

You may also construct a list of child objects for inserting into multiple XElement if you choose or use an XElement constructor as another way to create your XML tree.

Another method is using a nested method where you use an XElement with children and continue to the level that you want, this is what's called a ""functional construction"" which, if you format it properly, it should appear just like the tree its is constructing and what's more, you may as well pass it to just about any method that needs to work with it.

Finally, you can moreover make use of the Parse and static Load methods to convert your XML into an XElement tree.

The Load method functions by taking your file specification as a URI (or as a TextReader or XmlReader) and parsing the actual text stream into your XElement tree.

The parse ,approach will work much the same way apart from it will take a string of XML tags. The major point of note is that you could have to handle any resulting exceptions yourself if your XML is not right, the parsing will not work.