how to produce xml of list of objects using XElement in c#

Question

I am trying to convert a list of objects into xml using XElement. My code is as below

 var employees = new List<Employee>();

 employees.Add(new Employee("1", " Ali","",1000));
 employees.Add(new Employee("2", "Billy","",1001));

 var xml = new XElement("root");
 xml.Add(new XElement("Employees"));

 foreach (var employee in employees)
  {
    xml.Add(new XElement("employee", employee.Name));
  };

I want an output like this

<root>
 <Employees>
   <employee>Ali</employee>
   <employee>Billy</employee>
 </Employees>
</root>

but the output I m getting is

 <root>
 <Employees/>
   <employee>Ali</employee>
   <employee>Billy</employee>
</root>

I tried moving the Employees object inside the loop like below but that does not help either

 foreach (var employee in employees)
  {
    xml.Add(new XElement("Employees", new XElement("employee", employee.Name)));

  };

Answer 1

Within your loop, you should call Add() on your employees element rather than on your root:

 var employees = new List<Employee>();

 employees.Add(new Employee("1", " Ali","",1000));
 employees.Add(new Employee("2", "Billy","",1001));

 var xml = new XElement("root");
 var employeesElement = new XElement("Employees");

 foreach (var employee in employees)
 {
    employeesElement.Add(new XElement("employee", employee.Name));
 }
 xml.Add(employeesElement);

Answer 2

XElement constructor can handle IEnumerable so you can add employee elements at once while creating the parent Employees . In fact, the entire XML can be created at once :

var xml = new XElement("root",
    new XElement("Employees",
        employees.Select(e => new XElement("employee", e.Name))
    )
);