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Create an XML File or XmlDocument Directly from a StringBuilder

An earlier DevX tip, “Create a New XML File Using XmlDocument,” showed how to create a new XmlDocument, populate it, and save the results to a file. This tip uses the same XML example, but builds the document with a StringBuilder instead, which is simpler than working directly with the System.Xml.XmlDocument class.

Suppose you want to build this XML:

      XML    This is a list of my XML articles.    true

The following method shows how to build the preceding document with a StringBuilder. The following code gets a StringBuilder containing the minimal XML, appends strings containing the elements, loads an XmlDocument instance from the StringBuilder contents, and returns the populated XmlDocument object:

public XmlDocument BuildXmlDocument(){   StringBuilder Document = CreateBaseStringBuilder(); // create a generic XML string   //declare the root.   Document.AppendLine("");   // declare child node.   Document.AppendLine(""); //We could tab indention   // add child node's child node   Document.AppendLine("XML");   // add another child node   Document.AppendLine("This is a list of my XML articles.");   // and another   Document.AppendLine("true");   // close the Category node.   Document.AppendLine("");   // close the root node   Document.AppendLine("");   // now read the contents into an XmlDocument   try   {      // Create the new Instance.      XmlDocument XMLDocument = new XmlDocument();      // Add the content      XMLDocument.LoadXml(Document.ToString());      // return it.      return (XMLDocument);   }   catch(Exception ex)   {      // in case of failure return null      return (null);   }}// This function creates a new instance of System.Text.StringBuilder, // adds a Basic XmlDocumentDeclaration, // and returns the new StringBuilder.private StringBuilder CreateBaseStringBuilder(){   StringBuilder BaseDocument = new StringBuilder();   BaseDocument.AppendLine("");   return (BaseDocument);}

Note that you’d need to call the returned XmlDocument’s Save method from the calling function.

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