Visual Basic 2012 Programmer's Reference

LINQ TO XML

LINQ to XML refers to methods that let a program move data between XML objects and other data-containing objects. For example, using LINQ to XML you can select customer data and use it to build an XML document.

LINQ provides a new selection of XML elements. These classes contained in the System.Xml.Linq namespace correspond to the classes in the System.Xml namespace. The names of the new classes begin with “X” instead of “Xml.” For example, the LINQ class representing an element is XElement whereas the System.Xml class is XmlElement.

The LINQ versions of the XML classes provide many of the same features as the System.Xml versions, but they also provide support for new LINQ features.

The following section describes one of the most visible features of the LINQ XML classes: XML literals. The two sections after that introduce methods for using LINQ to move data into and out of XML objects.

XML Literals

In addition to features similar to those provided by the System.Xml classes, the System.Xml.Linq classes provide new LINQ-oriented features. One of the most visible of those features is the ability to use XML literal values. For example, the following code creates an XDocument object that contains three Customer elements:

Dim xml_literal As XElement =
    <AllCustomers>
        <Customer FirstName="Ann" LastName="Archer">100.00</Customer>
        <Customer FirstName="Ben" LastName="Best">-24.54</Customer>
        <Customer FirstName="Carly" LastName="Cant">62.40</Customer>
    </AllCustomers>

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