.NET & XML

The XmlNode Type Hierarchy

Because the .NET Framework provides a complete Level 2 Core implementation, the standard node inheritance tree is available. As you’ll recall from Chapter 1, each node in an XML document is represented by an appropriately named class, starting with the abstract base class, XmlNode. Look at Figure 5-2 and compare the XmlNode inheritance hierarchy to the DOM Node inheritance hierarchy in Figure 5-1. You should see that every DOM type maps to exactly one .NET XmlNode subclass, although some XmlNode subclasses do not have an equivalent DOM type.

Figure 5-2. XmlNode inheritance hierarchy

You can also see in Figure 5-2 that the .NET Framework inserts some additional levels of inheritance in the DOM hierarchy. These additional types provide a place for groupings of common functionality (XmlLinkedNode) as well as adding some functionality that is not required by the DOM specification (XmlWhitespace, XmlSignificantWhitespace).

The .NET DOM implementation provides intuitive names, similar enough to the relevant DOM interface to understand without further comment. In most cases, there is a one-to-one relationship between a DOM interface and the .NET implementation; however, Table 5-1 lists the exceptions to that rule.

Table 5-1. .NET DOM implementation exceptions

DOM interface	.NET implementation	Notes
DOMString	String	The DOM recommendation specifies that a language ...