Add attribute and string to XML File in c#

Question

I looked around the internet but I can't find a solution for my problem, although I guess this should be very simple.

I have a XML document. There two nodes that look like:

<Attachments>
  </Attachments>

 <Templates>
  </Templates>

After adding two elements to each node, they should look like:

<Attachments>
        <Attachment INDEX0="Test1" />
        <Attachment INDEX1="Test2" />
      </Attachments>

     <Templates>
        <Template INDEX0="Test1">EMPTY</Template>
        <Template INDEX0="Test2">EMPTY</Template>
      </Templates>

I tried following code for the first one:

 XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
        doc.Load(Path.Combine(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory(), "test.xml"));
        XmlElement root = doc.DocumentElement;
        XmlNode node = root.SelectSingleNode("//Attachments");

    List<String> list = new List<string>() {"Test1","Test2"};

    foreach(var item in list)
    {
        XmlElement elem = doc.CreateElement("Attachment");
        root.AppendChild(elem);
        XmlNode subNode = root.SelectSingleNode("Attachment");
        XmlAttribute xKey = doc.CreateAttribute(string.Format("INDEX{0}", list.IndexOf(item).ToString()));
        xKey.Value = item;
        subNode.Attributes.Append(xKey);
    }

but this does absolutely nothing. How can I achieve these two cases?

Thank you!

Charles Mager · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-21 14:52:50Z

2

I'd suggest using LINQ to XML unless you have a specific reason you can't. The old XmlDocument API is quite painful to work with:

var items = new List<string> {"Test1", "Test2"};

var attachments = items.Select((value, index) =>
    new XElement("Attachment", new XAttribute("INDEX" + index, value)));

var doc = XDocument.Load(@"path/to/file.xml");

doc.Descendants("Attachments")
    .Single()
    .Add(attachments);

See this fiddle for a working demo.

answered May 21, 2016 at 14:52

Charles Mager

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3 Comments

Canox Over a year ago

That's great! Thank you very much!

Canox Over a year ago

One question. How do I put an inner text into it. Like in the template node?

Charles Mager Over a year ago

@Canox your best course of action now is to look at some documentation and tutorials around LINQ to XML. To add text to an element, just include some text in the constructor params. To set the text of an existing element or attribute, set its Value property.

Canox · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-21 14:31:41Z

0

Sorry, I found the error. The foreach loop should look like:

        foreach(var item in list)
        {
            XmlElement elem = doc.CreateElement(string.Format("Attachment{0}", list.IndexOf(item)));
            node.AppendChild(elem);
            XmlNode subNode = root.SelectSingleNode(string.Format("//Attachment{0}", list.IndexOf(item)));
            XmlAttribute xKey = doc.CreateAttribute(string.Format("INDEX{0}", list.IndexOf(item).ToString()));
            xKey.Value = item;
            subNode.Attributes.Append(xKey);
        }

but I still don't know how to achieve the case with the template attribute in my example.

edited May 21, 2016 at 14:31

answered May 21, 2016 at 14:15

Canox

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