C# Cookbook

17.10. Putting Together an XML Document

Problem

You have various pieces of a document in XML form that need to be put together to form a single XML document—this is the opposite of what was done in Recipe 17.9. In this case, you have received various pieces of an invoice in XML form. For example, one department sent the shipping information as an XML document, one sent the billing information in XML, and another sent invoice line items, also as an XML document. You need a way to put these XML pieces together to form a single XML invoice document.

Solution

In order to reconstitute the original invoice, we need to reverse the process used to create the pieces of the invoice using multiple XmlDocuments. There are three parts being sent back to us to help in reforming the original invoice XML: BillingEnvelope.xml, ShippingEnvelope.xml, and Fulfillment.xml. These are shown listed in the following sections:

BillingEnvelope XML

<BillingEnvelope invoiceDate="2003-10-05" invoiceNumber="INV-01">
    <billInfo>
        <name>Beerly Standing</name>
        <attn>Accounting</attn>
        <street>98 North Street</street>
        <city>Intox</city>
        <state>NH</state>
    </billInfo>
</BillingEnvelope>

ShippingEnvelope XML

<ShippingEnvelope invoiceDate="2003-10-05" invoiceNumber="INV-01">
    <shipInfo>
        <name>Beerly Standing</name>
        <attn>Receiving</attn>
        <street>47 South Street</street>
        <city>Intox</city>
        <state>NH</state>
    </shipInfo>
</ShippingEnvelope>

FulfillmentEnvelope XML

<FulfillmentEnvelope invoiceDate="2003-10-05" invoiceNumber="INV-01"> ...