C# 6.0 Cookbook, 4th Edition

Chapter 10. XML

10.0 Introduction

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a simple, portable, and flexible way to represent data in a structured format. XML is used in a myriad of ways, from acting as the foundation of web-based messaging protocols such as SOAP to being one of the more popular ways to store configuration data (such as the web.config, machine.config, or security.config files in the .NET Framework). Microsoft recognized the usefulness of XML to developers and has done a nice job of giving you choices concerning the trade-offs involved. Sometimes you want to simply run through an XML document looking for a value in a read-only cursorlike fashion; other times you need to be able to randomly access various pieces of the document; and sometimes, it is handy to be able to query and work with XML declaratively. Microsoft provides classes such as XmlReader and XmlWriter for lighter access and XmlDocument for full Document Object Model (DOM) processing support. To support querying an XML document or constructing XML declaratively, C# provides LINQ to XML (also known as XLINQ) in the form of the XElement and XDocument classes.

It is likely that you will be dealing with XML in .NET to one degree or another. This chapter explores some of the uses for XML and XML-based technologies, such as XPath and XSLT, as well as showing how these technologies are used by and sometimes replaced by LINQ to XML. It also explores topics such as XML validation and transformation of XML to HTML. ...