.NET & XML

Using the XmlWriter

XmlWriter contains methods to write any type of XML node to its output Stream. There is just one subclass in the .NET Framework, XmlTextWriter, which will handle most of your XML output needs.

Example 3-3 shows a short program that writes data to an XmlTextWriter.

Example 3-3. Program to write XML with XmlTextWriter

using System; using System.IO; using System.Text; using System.Xml; public class WriteXml { public static void Main(string [ ] args) { // Create the XmlWriter XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(Console.Out); // Set the formatting to something nice writer.Formatting = Formatting.Indented; // Write the XML declaration writer.WriteStartDocument(true); // Write a comment writer.WriteComment("the first element follows."); // Start the root element writer.WriteStartElement("root"); // Write an attribute writer.WriteAttributeString("id","_1"); // Write another attribute writer.WriteStartAttribute"name", "foo"); writer.WriteString("bar"); writer.WriteEndAttribute( ); // Write another element writer.WriteElementString("element1","some characters"); writer.WriteStartElement("cdataElement"); writer.WriteAttributeString("date",DateTime.Now.ToString( )); writer.WriteCData("<this contains some characters XML wouldn't like & would choke on"); writer.WriteString("<this contains some characters XML wouldn't like & so the XmlWriter replaces them"); writer.WriteEndElement( ); // Write an empty element writer.WriteStartElement("emptyElement"); writer.WriteEndElement( ...