C# reading and writing xml file

Net 1. Net 3. This is possible, because the XmlReader lets us see, if we are at the end of the XML collection or at the beginning of the next child element:. We can now have private property setters and internal class constructors for the Node and ModelRoot classes, which still have to be public to function correctly with the IXmlSerializable interface implementation and the IXmlSerializer service class.

This means that clients of the TreeModelLib library can see the modelling classes but they can no longer create these classes and cannot manipulate data items without having to go through the defined interfaces. So, hidding implementation details with the XMLSerializer cannot be done completely although we get pretty close. That is, we can use the DataContractSerializer with the IXmlSerializable interface on the modelling class to completely hide implementation details of saving and loading data via XML.

Whitespace more frequently, while the XMLSerializer is happy to browse from one tag StartElement to the other, never mentioning the white spaces in-between. These details are not difficult to handle, when it has become clear where the difference in behaviour is, but it is important to carefully debug existing code when changing from one serializer to the other. The remainder of this article reviews the details of the DataContractSerializer implementation, while the XMLSerializer implementation is covered with the attached downloads - mainly because the XMLSerializer cannot implement a hidden class model and the DataContractSerializer is a more recent class that should be considered as preference over the XMLSerializer since it offers the same features plus more advanced functions.

This requires a reference to the System. Serialization assembly and a using statement with that namespace. We also have to replace the previously stated pattern for reading and writing child items with a pattern that is specific to the DataContractSerializer:. This is all that is required towards using an XML serializer with a completely hidden data model implementation.

All solutions discussed so far in this article are still naive with respect to the usage of an XML Schema Definition XSD , which is typically used to ensure that all data items match an expected consistency. The next section evaluates that point with the DataContractSerializer to make things even more robust towards failures that usually occur in production.

The XsdDataContract. The exported XSD is not much to talk about in terms of detail and so forth but maybe this detail is useful to someone else. The project shows that the XmlReaderSettings class can contain multiple schema definitions short schemas or XSDs which in turn can be used to initialize an XmlReader. The XmlReader can then use the call back function to report any errors or warnings, if they are necessary.

Xml, System. Schema, System. Serialization, System. XPath, and System. Xsl to support XML classes. The System. Xml namespace contains major XML classes. This namespace contains many classes to read and write XML documents. In this article, we are going to concentrate on reader and write class. These reader and writer classes are used to read and write XMl documents.

As you can see there are four reader and two writer classes. The XmlReader class is an abstract bases classes and contains methods and properties to read a document. The Read method reads a node in the stream. Besides reading functionality, this class also contains methods to navigate through a document nodes. This class also has a method Skip to skip current node and move to next one. We'll see these methods in our sample example.

As their name explains, they are used to read text, node, and schemas. This class provides many write method to write XML document items. This class is base class for XmlTextWriter class, which we'll be using in our sample example.

The XmlNode class plays an important role. Although, this class represents a single node of XML but that could be the root node of an XML document and could represent the entire file. This class is an abstract base class for many useful classes for inserting, removing, and replacing nodes, navigating through the document.

It also contains properties to get a parent or child, name, last child, node type and more. XmlDocument class represents an XML document and provides methods and properties to load and save a document. It also provides functionality to add XML items such as attributes, comments, spaces, elements, and new nodes. XmlDocumentFragment class represents a document fragment, which can be used to add to a document.

NET data set objects. In spite of above discussed classes, System. Xml namespace contains more classes. Next namespace in Xml series is System. Serialization namespace contains classes that are used to serialize objects into XML format documents or streams. This class contains many Move methods to move through a document. This file comes with VS. NET samples. You can search this on your machine and change the path of the file in the following line:.

Besides XmlReader methods and properties, these classes also contain members to read text, node, and schemas respectively.

Feedback will be sent to Microsoft: By pressing the submit button, your feedback will be used to improve Microsoft products and services. Privacy policy. The Read method returns an XmlSchema object representing the XML schema and takes an optional ValidationEventHandler as a parameter to handle schema validation warnings and errors encountered while reading an XML schema. The following code example illustrates reading and writing XML schemas from and to a file.

The code example takes the example. The code example also provides a ValidationEventHandler as a parameter to the static Read method to handle any schema validation warnings or errors encountered while reading the XML schema.