XML Creation using LINQ to XML

Vipul Malhotra
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There are many different techniques to use by which you can create an XML document in C#. One of them is LINQ to XML which we are going to discuss in this article.

Let’s say we need to create an XML as below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Parent>
<Header>
<FileDetails>
<FileName>RandomFile</FileName>
<FileVersion>1.0</FileVersion>
</FileDetails>
</Header>
<Body>
<Infos>
<Info Type="Information1">This is Information1</Info>
<Info Type="Information2">This is Information2</Info>
</Infos>
<Users>
<UserDetails>
<Name>
<FirstName>Vipul</FirstName>
<MiddleName/>
<LastName>Malhotra</LastName>
</Name>
<DateOfBirth>12-Apr-1990</DateOfBirth>
</UserDetails>
</Users>
</Body>

Let’s break the creation of the file in two parts so as to be able to see more features.

We will first create the below Xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Parent>
<Header>
<FileDetails>
<FileName>RandomFile</FileName>
<FileVersion>1.0</FileVersion>
</FileDetails>
</Header>
<Body>
<Infos>
<Info Type="Information1">This is Information1</Info>
<Info Type="Information2">This is Information2</Info>
</Infos>
</Body>

In order to create this, we will first define an XDocument with the parent root as below:

XDocument doc = new XDocument(new XElement("Parent"));

After this, we will use this “doc” as the root of the file and will writing nested XElement to it.

Let’s first create the Header portion of the xml.
Header

Please notice that the XElement “Header “ is added as a new element and the further elements are added as nested to this “Header” element. It is due to the reason that the elements are sub-elements of “Header”. Further “FileName” and “FileVersion” element is a sub-element of “FileDetails”

In the same way, we would add another section to the root of the doc. This section would be “Body”.

The code for the same would be as:
code

This follows the same logic that “Body” is also sub-node of the root “parent” and so it is added directly to the root. Whereas , the element “Infos” is sub-element of “Body” and is so added in the way above. Same goes for “Info” which is a further sub-element of “Infos”.

Also notice how an attribute is added to each of the “Info” element using XAttribute.

After this, we further need to add the below section as sub-nodes of “Body” and not the root of the application:

<Users>
<UserDetails>
<Name>
<FirstName>Vipul</FirstName>
<MiddleName/>
<LastName>Malhotra</LastName>
</Name>
<DateOfBirth>12-Apr-1990</DateOfBirth>
</UserDetails>
</Users>

In order to do that, we would make sure that the code starts appending the code inside the “Body” tag of the already created xml.

Using XDocument, we can search for the node “Body” and then start adding node XElements to it .
node

Searching a node Is done using:

Further adding more elements to it is done using the below code:
code

The logic behind the hierarchy is the same as that discussed above.

The code can also be used inside a loop in case we need to add many similar sections to a particular node. Like in this case there can be many users and all of their details would have to be added in different UserDetails section inside the “Body” node.

I am attaching a the code project with this article.

In case of any questions, please reach out to me in the comments below.

XML creation using LINQ to XML

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