Though I found a lot of information on how to read a XML file, I wasn't able to find a complete solution for building XML structure and writing it to file system for my project. I hope this tutorial (or code sample) is helpful to some people.
For Whom?
This tutorial is designed for people with basic XML knowledge, to serve as a reference when building a XML file, the idea is very simple. Finding all the classes, methods needed is actually what takes time, thus the tutorial concentrates on C# language.
Different from writing a regular file.
When we open a file to write, there are many options available: override if already exists, append, etc. It surprises me that there is no single class in C# that does the following: "Read following XML file, if the XML file doesn't exist, create new XML file (Correct me if I am wrong)." Either XmlTextWriter or XmlDocument satisfy the requirement, the combination of the two works well.
Code Sample
Sample Output
using System.Xml; void WriteXML() { try { //pick whatever filename with .xml extension string filename = "XML"+DateTime.Now.Day + ".xml"; XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument(); try { xmlDoc.Load(filename); } catch(System.IO.FileNotFoundException) { //if file is not found, create a new xml file XmlTextWriter xmlWriter = new XmlTextWriter(filename, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8); xmlWriter.Formatting = Formatting.Indented; xmlWriter.WriteProcessingInstruction("xml", "version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'"); xmlWriter.WriteStartElement("Root"); //If WriteProcessingInstruction is used as above, //Do not use WriteEndElement() here //xmlWriter.WriteEndElement(); //it will cause the <Root></Root> to be <Root /> xmlWriter.Close(); xmlDoc.Load(filename); } XmlNode root = xmlDoc.DocumentElement; XmlElement childNode = xmlDoc.CreateElement("childNode"); XmlElement childNode2 = xmlDoc.CreateElement("SecondChildNode"); XmlText textNode = xmlDoc.CreateTextNode("hello"); textNode.Value = "hello, world"; root.AppendChild(childNode); childNode.AppendChild(childNode2); childNode2.SetAttribute("Name", "Value"); childNode2.AppendChild(textNode); textNode.Value = "replacing hello world"; xmlDoc.Save(filename); } catch(Exception ex) { WriteError(ex.ToString()); } } void WriteError(string str) { outputBox.Text = str; } |