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?

Please post the code you have written so far. People generally do not like to just write your code for you. — Mitch Wheat
Agreed - this is actually extremely simple to do in a single statement, but just giving you the answer won't help you learn much. — Jon Skeet

Jon Skeet Jon Skeet · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-01T08:50:00

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");

XML file creation using XDocument in C#

2 Answers