XmlDocument does not load deep enough when deployed.

Question

Need help I´m loading an xml file using XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument (); xmlDoc.Load(filePath); Everything works fine when I am debbuging. However when I publish the application as a clickonce package something weird happens. The above code works however not the entire xml file gets loaded. The root node and first and second level nodes gets loaded but not the third and fourth level nodes (and so on..). If I attach a debugger to the clickonce-application everything works fine again but as soon as I detach the debugger the xml document does not get deep loaded. I have struggled with this for two days now. Framework 3.5 (Winforms application) Vista X64 VS2010 Thanks

Sam Hobbs · Answer

When I have a file open in Visual Studio that my program updates and I execute the program in VS VS usually informs me that the file has changed eventhough the program has not finished writing to it and VS asks me if I want to reload the file. I don't know if that is relevant here but if it is then it shows that notification of a file change can occur before the change is complete.

Vulpes · Answer

If you're using FileSystemWatcher then I'd have thought that monitoring the Changed event should tell you when the file has been fully written to. Failing that you could poll the file's GetLastWriteTime() method until it gives a changed value though I'm not sure it's really a better solution than what you're doing now :)

Philip · Answer

Think I have figured this out. I was using a filesystemwatcher which triggered the system to read the file. Apparently you can load the file into an XmlDocument (as well as a Linq XDocument) object without any error reported despite the fact that the file has not been fully written to disk. During the debugging I had a breakpoint which halted the application so that the file could be fully written so that must be why it always seemed to work during debugging. Now to the next problem. I am using something similar to this to find out when the file has been completely written. However throwing exceptions around does not seem like a good solution. for (int i = 0; i { FileStream fs = null; try { fs = new FileStream(filePath FileMode.Open FileAccess.ReadWrite FileShare.None 100); fs.Close(); break; } catch { AppendDebugInfo(Waiting for file to become ready.); Thread.Sleep(1000); } } Any suggestions to how to know when a file has been completely written to disk?

Vulpes · Answer

I've no idea what could be causing that problem which is one of the strangest I've ever seen or heard about. My only suggestion is to try using LINQ to XML instead of the legacy XmlDocument class: using System.Xml.Linq; // ... XDocument xmlDoc = XDocument.Load(filePath); MessageBox.Show(xmlDoc.ToString());

Philip · Answer

Yes of course =) Douple triple checked it. I tried to run the same application under Windows 7 (X64) and there it worked (same xml-file). Vista bug? Update: Tested with Windows 7 in a virtual environment same problem. Extremely annoying!

Frogleg · Answer

Make sure you are opening the same xml file