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");