Write XML file using XmlTextWriter

I will give an example on how to create a simple XML-file by using the XmlTextWriter. It’s actually quite simple, and not at all as time consuming as I first thought when I started playing around with it.

XML namespace
First of all we have to add the namespace for XML:

Using System.XML;

Begin the document
The document is created using the next lines of code, and Encoding is also chosen (Choose UTF8 usually, but in some cases ANSI encoding is wanted).

  
//XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(Console.Out);
XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter("XmlTextWriterTest.xml", Encoding.UTF8);
 
writer.WriteStartDocument();
writer.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
writer.Indentation = 2;

Notice that when you make a console program, you can output the xml directly to the screen, which is what I use when I am just quickly testing out some code that spits out xml.

WriteStartDocument() writes the

I also always use indentation, and I have used an indentation value of 2 spaces. This makes it look nice.

Add the data to the XML file


 writer.WriteComment("This is demonstration in how to create a simple xml-file, using XmlTextWriter");
 
 writer.WriteStartElement("Employees");
 writer.WriteStartElement("Employee");
 
 writer.WriteAttributeString("Id", "436");
 
 writer.WriteStartElement("Name");
 writer.WriteAttributeString("Firstname", "Thomas");
 writer.WriteAttributeString("Middlename", "N/A");
 writer.WriteAttributeString("Lastname", "Lund");
 writer.WriteEndElement(); //End Name
 
 writer.WriteStartElement("Personal");
 writer.WriteElementString("Age", "31");
 
 writer.WriteStartElement("Family");
 writer.WriteStartElement("Partner");
 writer.WriteAttributeString("Married", "Yes");
 writer.WriteString("Mia Lund");
 writer.WriteEndElement(); //End Partner
 
 writer.WriteStartElement("Children");
 writer.WriteAttributeString("Amount", "1");
 writer.WriteElementString("Name", "Noah Lund");
 writer.WriteEndElement(); //End Children
 
 writer.WriteEndElement(); //End Family
 writer.WriteEndElement(); //End Personal
 
 writer.WriteElementString("Salary", "Works for peanuts");
 
 writer.WriteEndElement(); //Ends Employee
 writer.WriteEndElement(); //Ends Employees
 writer.WriteEndDocument();
 writer.close();

Comment is pretty selfexplanatory. All it does it comment out a piece of text in the xml-file
writer.WriteStartElement(”Employees”); writes and WriteEndElement() closes the last opened Element.

You can nest as many WriteStartElements as you wish, and you can also throw in a few WriteAttributesString(”string”, “Value”) to write attributes to the last opened Element.

The above code writes the following XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!--This is demonstration in how to create a simple xml-file, using XmlTextWriter-->
<Employees>
  <Employee Id="436">
    <Name Firstname="Thomas" Middlename="N/A" Lastname="Lund" />
    <Personal>
      <Age>31</Age>
      <Family>
        <Partner Married="Yes">Mia Lund</Partner>
        <Children Amount="1">
          <Name>Noah Lund</Name>
        </Children>
      </Family>
    </Personal>
    <Salary>Works for peanuts</Salary>
  </Employee>
</Employees>