My name is Edward Tanguay. I'm an American software and web developer living and working in Berlin, Germany.
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C# CODE EXAMPLE created on Thursday, June 25, 2009 permalink
Four ways to create an XML file
Here are four ways to create the same XML string that I needed for an application: string concatenation, XmlWriter, LINQ-to-XML, in reverse order of preference (plus an example using XML literals which Jim Wooley posted on his site along with some notes on the dangers of string concatenation). These code samples assume an object called DataType which is not included in the code, so the code isn't executable as is, but I just wanted to record the syntax of each way for further reference. Notice the Enumerable.Range(1, 3).Select on the LINQ-to-XML functions as a for loop.
String Concatentation:
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    sb.Append("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>" + Environment.NewLine);

    sb.Append(String.Format("<{0}>{1}", _pluralCamelNotation, Environment.NewLine));
    for (int index = 0; index < 3; index++)
    {
        sb.Append(String.Format("\t<{0}>{1}", _singularCamelNotation, Environment.NewLine));
        foreach (DataType dataType in _allDataTypes)
        {
            sb.Append(String.Format("\t\t<{0}>{2}</{0}>{1}", dataType.CamelCaseNotation, Environment.NewLine, dataType.GetDummyData()));
        }
        sb.Append(String.Format("\t</{0}>{1}", _singularCamelNotation, Environment.NewLine));
    }
    sb.Append(String.Format("</{0}>{1}", _pluralCamelNotation, Environment.NewLine));

XmlWriter:
            XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings();
            settings.NewLineHandling = NewLineHandling.Entitize;
            settings.Indent = true;
            settings.IndentChars = "\t";

            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            using (XmlWriter xw = XmlWriter.Create(sb, settings))
            {
                xw.WriteStartDocument();
                xw.WriteStartElement(_pluralCamelNotation);
                for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
                {
                    xw.WriteStartElement(_singularCamelNotation);
                    foreach (DataType dataType in _allDataTypes)
                    {
                        xw.WriteElementString(dataType.CamelCaseNotation, dataType.GetDummyData());
                    }
                    xw.WriteEndElement();
                }
                xw.WriteEndElement();
                xw.WriteEndDocument();
                xw.Close();
            }
            return sb.ToString();

XML Literals (VB.NET):

        Dim doc = <?xml version="1.0"?>
                    <<%= _pluralCamelNotation %>>
                        <%= From i In Enumerable.Range(1, 3) _
                            Select <<%= _singluarNotation %>>
                                     <%= From t In _allDataTypes _
                                         Select <<%= t.CamelCaseNotation %>>
                                             <%= t.GetDummyData %></> %>
                                 </> %>
                    </>

LINQ-to-XML:
            XDocument doc = new XDocument(
                new XDeclaration("1.0", null, null),
                new XElement(_pluralCamelNotation,
                    Enumerable.Range(1, 3).Select(
                        i => new XElement(_singularCamelNotation,
                            _allDataTypes.Select(
                                dataType => new XElement(
                                    dataType.CamelCaseNotation,
                                    dataType.GetDummyData())
                            )
                    ))));
            return doc.ToString();
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