Comparing 2 XML docs and applying the changes to source document

Question

Here's my problem.I have 2 xmlfiles with identical structure, with the second xml containing only few node compared to first.

File1

  <root>
    <alpha>111</alpha>
    <beta>22</beta>
    <gamma></gamma>
    <delta></delta>
  </root>

File2

 <root>
    <beta>XX</beta>
    <delta>XX</delta>
 </root>

This's what the result should look like

 <root>
    <alpha>111</alpha>
    <beta>22</beta>
    <gamma></gamma>
    <delta>XX</delta>
 </root>

Basically if the node contents of any node in File1 is blank then it should read the values from File2(if it exists, that is).

I did try my luck with Microsoft XmlDiff API but it didn't work out for me(the patch process didn't apply changes to the source doc). Also I'm a bit worried about the DOM approach that it uses, because of the size of the xml that I'll be dealing with. Can you please suggest a good way of doing this. I'm using C# 2

Answer 1

This merge seems very specific.

If that is the case, just write some code to load both xml files and apply the changes as you described.

Answer 2

In XSLT you can use the document() function to retrieve nodes from File2 if you encounter an empty node in File1. Something like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">

  <xsl:template match="root/*[.='']">
    <xsl:variable name="file2node">
        <xsl:copy-of select="document('File2.xml')/root/*[name()=name(current())]"/>
    </xsl:variable>
    <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="$file2node != ''">
        <xsl:copy-of select="$file2node"/>
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise>
        <xsl:copy/>
      </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="*">
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/>
      <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Answer 3

Here is a little bit simpler and more efficient solution that that proposed by Alastair (see my comment to his solution).

This transformation:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" >
  <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>

    <xsl:variable name="vFile2"
      select="document('File2.xml')"/>

    <xsl:template match="*">
      <xsl:copy>
        <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/>
      <xsl:apply-templates/>
     </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="*[not(text())]">
      <xsl:copy>
     <xsl:copy-of
       select="$vFile2/*/*[name() = name(current())]/text()"/>
     </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

when applied on this XML document:

<root>
    <alpha>111</alpha>
    <beta>22</beta>
    <gamma></gamma>
    <delta></delta>
</root>

produces the wanted result:

<root>
    <alpha>111</alpha>
    <beta>22</beta>
    <gamma></gamma>
    <delta>XX</delta>
</root>