How to create xml file from a list of objects

Question

I defined 3 classes:

public class PublishedPage
{
    public string Action { get; private set; }
    public string PageGuid { get; set; }
    public List<string> SearchableProperties { get; set; }

    public PublishedPage()
    {
        Action = "Published";
        SearchableProperties = new List<string>();
    }
}

public class DeletedPage
{
    public string Action { get; private set; }
    public string PageGuid { get; set; }

    public DeletedPage()
    {
        Action = "Deleted";
    }
}

public class MovedPage
{
    public string Action { get; private set; }
    public string PageGuid { get; set; }
    public string OldParentGuid { get; set; }
    public string NewParentGuid { get; set; }

    public MovedPage()
    {
        Action = "Moved";
    }
}

Somewhere in code I have something like this:

List<PublishedPage> publishedPages = GetPublishedPages();
List<MovedPage> movedPages = GetMovedPages();
List<DeletedPage> deletedPages = GetDeletedPages();

Now I want to create a XML file containing these 3 collections but don't know how.
XML should be like this:

<PublishedPages>
   <PublishedPage>
      <Action>Published</Action>
      <PageGuid>.....</PageGuid>
      <SearchableProperties>
         <Name>Name 1</Name>
         <Name>Name 2</Name>
      </SearchablePeoperties>
   </PublishedPage>
   <PublishedPage>
   ...
   <PublishedPage>
</PublishedPages>
<MovedPages>
...
</MovedPages>
<DeletedPages>
...
</DeletedPages>

Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you!

Answer 1

Use serialization, a good example is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/815813

Answer 2

I think these links would be quite helpful. Once you get understanding of the code and structure, it would be very easy. Please try these

http://blog.pankajmishra.in/writing-xml-file-using-xmlwriter/

http://www.java2s.com/Code/CSharp/XML/ProgrammaticallycreatinganewXMLdocument.htm

http://www.codeguru.com/csharp/csharp/cs_data/xml/article.php/c4227

Good Luck :)

Answer 3

Serialization is fairly slow. performance -wise. A similar approach would be something like this: StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter(); XmlTextWriter xmltextWriter = new XmlTextWriter(stringWriter) {Formatting = Formatting.Indented};

        // Start document
        xmltextWriter.WriteStartDocument();
        xmltextWriter.WriteStartElement("ROOT");

        foreach (PublishedPage page in publishedPages)
        {
            //Create a page element
            xmltextWriter.WriteStartElement("Page");
            xmltextWriter.WriteAttributeString("Action", page.Action);
            xmltextWriter.WriteAttributeString("SearchableProperties", page.SearchableProperties);

xmltextWriter.WriteEndElement(); }

.....same for the other lists // End document xmltextWriter.WriteEndElement(); xmltextWriter.Flush(); xmltextWriter.Close(); stringWriter.Flush();

Answer 4

What you need is XML Serialization as indicated by @Kyndings. But I will give you some code snippets to help:

In order to serialize one object your code should be something similar to

string serializedPublishedPage = Serializer.SerializeObject(PublishedPage, typeof(PublishedPage));

To have all three in the same XML you create a function that generates a list of XMLElements :

private List<XmlElement> functionA ()
{
    XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
    List<XmlElement> elementList = new List<XmlElement>();
    XmlElement element;
    string serializedPublishedPage = Serializer.SerializeObject(PublishedPage, typeof(PublishedPage));
    string serializedDeletedPage = Serializer.SerializeObject(DeletedPage, typeof(DeletedPage));
    string serializedMovedPage = Serializer.SerializeObject(MovedPage, typeof(MovedPage));
    doc.LoadXml(serializedDemographic);
    element = doc.DocumentElement;
    elementList.Add(element);
    return elementList;
}

And later use it:

XmlDocument xmlData = new XmlDocument();
XmlElement root = xmlData.CreateElement("WHATEVER");
XmlElement Element;
XmlNode Node;


XmlElement AuxElement;
XmlNode AuxNode;
foreach (XmlElement xmlElement in functionA())
{
  AuxNode= doc.ImportNode(xmlElement, true);
  AuxElement.AppendChild(node);
}
// Now you have your XML objects in AuxElement

Node = xmlData.ImportNode(AuxElement, true);
root.AppendChild(Node);

// you have your full XML in xmlData in xmlData.InnerXml 

Answer 5

Try this, I'm using Xml Serialization :

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Serialization;

namespace Test
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Pages pages = new Pages();
            pages.PublishedPages.Add(
                new PublishedPage()
                {
                    PageGuid = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(),
                    SearchableProperties = new List<string>()
                    {
                        "Foo",
                        "Bar",
                    }
                });
            pages.PublishedPages.Add(
                new PublishedPage()
                {
                    PageGuid = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(),
                    SearchableProperties = new List<string>()
                    {
                    "Tic",
                    "Tac",
                    "Toe",
                    }
                });
            pages.DeletedPages.Add(
                new DeletedPage()
                {
                    PageGuid = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(),
                });
            pages.DeletedPages.Add(
                new DeletedPage()
                {
                    PageGuid = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(),
                });
            pages.MovedPages.Add(
                new MovedPage()
                {
                    PageGuid = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(),
                    OldParentGuid = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(),
                    NewParentGuid = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(),
                });
            pages.MovedPages.Add(
                new MovedPage()
                {
                    PageGuid = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(),
                    OldParentGuid = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(),
                    NewParentGuid = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(),
                });
            Console.WriteLine(SerializeObject(pages));
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// To convert a Byte Array of Unicode values (UTF-8 encoded) to a complete String.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="characters">Unicode Byte Array to be converted to String</param>
        /// <returns>String converted from Unicode Byte Array</returns>
        private static string UTF8ByteArrayToString(Byte[] characters)
        {
            UTF8Encoding encoding = new UTF8Encoding();
            string constructedString = encoding.GetString(characters);
            return (constructedString);
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Converts the String to UTF8 Byte array and is used in De serialization
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="pXmlString"></param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        private static Byte[] StringToUTF8ByteArray(string pXmlString)
        {
            UTF8Encoding encoding = new UTF8Encoding();
            Byte[] byteArray = encoding.GetBytes(pXmlString);
            return byteArray;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// From http://www.dotnetjohn.com/articles.aspx?articleid=173
        /// Method to convert a custom Object to XML string
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="pObject">Object that is to be serialized to XML</param>
        /// <returns>XML string</returns>
        public static string SerializeObject(Object pObject)
        {
            try
            {
                string xmlizedString = null;
                MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream();
                XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(pObject.GetType());
                XmlTextWriter xmlTextWriter = new XmlTextWriter(memoryStream, Encoding.UTF8);
                xmlTextWriter.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;

                XmlSerializerNamespaces ns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
                ns.Add("", "");

                xs.Serialize(xmlTextWriter, pObject, ns);
                memoryStream = (MemoryStream)xmlTextWriter.BaseStream;
                xmlizedString = UTF8ByteArrayToString(memoryStream.ToArray());
                return xmlizedString;
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                System.Console.WriteLine(e);
                return null;
            }
        }
    }

    [XmlRoot(ElementName="Pages", Namespace="")]
    public class Pages
    {
        public List<PublishedPage> PublishedPages { get; set; }
        public List<MovedPage> MovedPages { get; set; }
        public List<DeletedPage> DeletedPages { get; set; }

        public Pages()
        {
            PublishedPages = new List<PublishedPage>();
            MovedPages = new List<MovedPage>();
            DeletedPages = new List<DeletedPage>();
        }
    }

    public class PublishedPage
    {
        public string Action { get; set; }
        public string PageGuid { get; set; }
        public List<string> SearchableProperties { get; set; }

        public PublishedPage()
        {
            Action = "Published";
            SearchableProperties = new List<string>();
        }
    }

    public class DeletedPage
    {
        public string Action { get; set; }
        public string PageGuid { get; set; }

        public DeletedPage()
        {
            Action = "Deleted";
        }
    }

    public class MovedPage
    {
        public string Action { get; set; }
        public string PageGuid { get; set; }
        public string OldParentGuid { get; set; }
        public string NewParentGuid { get; set; }

        public MovedPage()
        {
            Action = "Moved";
        }
    }
}

Answer 6

Even though the XmlSerializer is the easiest one, if you already know the schema you can do it with a bit of linq to xml too:

XElement element = 
    new XElement("PublishedPages",
        (from page in publishedPages 
             select new XElement("PublishedPage",
                 new XElement("Action", page.Action),
                 new XElement("PageGuid",page.PageGuid),
                 new XElement("SearchableProperties",
                     (from property in page.SearchableProperties
                      select new XElement("Name",property)))
                      )
         )
     );