Check output size using .NET XmlTextWriter

Question

I need to generate an XML file and i need to stick as much data into it as possible BUT there is a filesize limit. So i need to keep inserting data until something says no more. How do i figure out the XML file size without repeatably writing it to file?

Answer 1

You can ask the XmlTextWriter for it's BaseStream, and check it's Position. As the other's pointed out, you may need to reserve some headroom to properly close the Xml.

Answer 2

In general, you cannot break XML documents at arbitrary locations, even if you close all open tags.

However, if what you need is to split an XML document over multiple files, each of no more than a certain size, then you should create your own subtype of the Stream class. This "PartitionedFileStream" class could write to a particular file, up to the size limit, then create a new file, and write to that file, up to the size limit, etc.

This would leave you with multiple files which, when concatenated, make up a valid XML document.

---

In the general case, closing tags will not work. Consider an XML format that must contain one element A followed by one element B. If you closed the tags after writing element A, then you do not have a valid document - you need to have written element B.

However, in the specific case of a simple site map file, it may be possible to just close the tags.

Answer 3

I agree with John Saunders. Here's some code that will basically do what he's talking about but as an XmlSerializer except as a FileStream and uses a MemoryStream as intermediate storage. It may be more effective to extend stream though.

public class PartitionedXmlSerializer<TObj>
{
    private readonly int _fileSizeLimit;

    public PartitionedXmlSerializer(int fileSizeLimit)
    {
        _fileSizeLimit = fileSizeLimit;
    }

    public void Serialize(string filenameBase, TObj obj)
    {
        using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
        {
            // serialize the object in the memory stream
            using (var xmlWriter = XmlWriter.Create(memoryStream))
                new XmlSerializer(typeof(TObj))
                    .Serialize(xmlWriter, obj);

            memoryStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);

            var extensionFormat = GetExtensionFormat(memoryStream.Length);

            var buffer = new char[_fileSizeLimit];

            var i = 0;
            // split the stream into files
            using (var streamReader = new StreamReader(memoryStream))
            {
                int readLength;
                while ((readLength = streamReader.Read(buffer, 0, _fileSizeLimit)) > 0)
                {
                    var filename 
                        = Path.ChangeExtension(filenameBase, 
                            string.Format(extensionFormat, i++));
                    using (var fileStream = new StreamWriter(filename))
                        fileStream.Write(buffer, 0, readLength);
                }
            }
        }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Gets the a file extension formatter based on the 
    /// <param name="fileLength">length of the file</param> 
    /// and the max file length
    /// </summary>
    private string GetExtensionFormat(long fileLength)
    {
        var numFiles = fileLength / _fileSizeLimit;
        var extensionLength = Math.Ceiling(Math.Log10(numFiles));
        var zeros = string.Empty;
        for (var j = 0; j < extensionLength; j++)
        {
            zeros += "0";
        }
        return string.Format("xml.part{{0:{0}}}", zeros);
    }
}

To use it, you'd initialize it with the max file length and then serialize using the base file path and then the object.

public class MyType
{
    public int MyInt;
    public string MyString;
}

public void Test()
{
    var myObj = new MyType { MyInt = 42, 
                             MyString = "hello there this is my string" };
    new PartitionedXmlSerializer<MyType>(2)
        .Serialize("myFilename", myObj);
}

This particular example will generate an xml file partitioned into

myFilename.xml.part001
myFilename.xml.part002
myFilename.xml.part003
...
myFilename.xml.part110