Generate xml using LINQ to XML

Question

Suppose that I have a class that looks like below, how do I create xml like below using LINQ to XML?

public class Order
{
  public string OrderNo {get; set;}
  public string ItemId {get; set;}
  public string ItemDesc {get; set;}
  public int Qty {get; set;}
}

<orders>
  <orderid>
     <orderno>1</orderno>
     <itemid>W001</itemid>
     <itemdesc>C# T-Shirst</itemdesc>
     <quantity>2</quantity>
  </orderid> 
  <orderid>
     <orderno>2</orderno>
     <itemid>W002</itemid>
     <itemdesc>XML T-Shirt</itemdesc>
     <quantity>1</quantity>
  </orderid>
</orders>

Answer 1

While you can use XmlSerialization, there are quite a number of cases where using LINQ to XML is just as easy and doesn't lock your class implementation into a single serialization scheme. Here's a bit of code to handle your request.

var xOrders = new XElement("orders",
    from o in Orders
    select new XElement("orderid", 
        new XElement("orderno", order.OrderNo),
        new XElement("itemid", order.ItemId),
        new XElement("itemdesc", order.ItemDesc),
        new XElement("quantity", order.Qty)));

xOrders.Save(targetPath);

Answer 2

You do not need linq to generate this xml, you could use linq to generate a collection and serialize the collection in a xml file.

Before serializing, you should add the Serializable attribute in your class:

[Serialize]
public class Order
{
  public string OrderNo {get; set;}
  public string ItemId {get; set;}
  public string ItemDesc {get; set;}
  public int Qty {get; set;}
}

Take a look here how to customize your serialization (using attributes): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/58a18dwa(v=vs.80).aspx

Create a method like this to serialize:

public statc void SerializeOrders(Order[] orders, string path)
{
   XmlSerializer parse = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Order[]));
   using (var writer = new StreamWriter(path))
   {
      parse.Serialize(writer, orders);
      writer.Close();
   }
}

And deserialize:

public statc Order[] Deserialize(string path)
{
    XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Order[]));
    Order[] result;
    using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(path))
    {
        result = (Order[]) ser.Deserialize(reader);
    }
    return result;
}

And use it:

// get the collection
var orders = (from o in Queryable<Order>
             where o.Something
             select o).ToArray();

    // serializing in xml
    SerializeOrders(orders, "C:\\result.xml");

   // deserializing the xml
   var serializedOrders = Deserialize("C:\\result.xml");

Answer 3

You have to respect the hierarchy.

Serializing this XML, we'll have something like this:

<Order>
   <OrderNo></OrderNo>
   <ItemId></ItemId>
   ...
<Order>

I think in this case, you will have to write on your own reading the object and generating the XML using XmlDocument, XElement or a StringBuilder for example.