Adding Elements to XmlNode w/o XmlDocument | Tech Off

CodeGuru123

I'm stumped on this one, been googling for hours...

I have a central xmldoc that I use to store all of my app settings, etc..

What I'm trying to do is simply pull an entire node from that file into one of my child forms where I can parse it out.

In the child form I also want to build a new node from new settings and pass it back into my central xmldoc config.

I need to do this without holding a reference to the parent xmlDoc.

I simply want to build an xmlNode from scratch, but I cannot figure out how without using XmlDoc to .CreateElement();

Certainly there has to be a way to XmlNode.CreateElemenet or XmlNode.AppendChild(new xmlElement())...

Any pointers would be much apperciated.

Thanks a bunch!

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

Use Linq to XML.

XDocument originalXDoc = XDocument.Load("config.file");

XElement originalXElement = originalXDoc.Descendants(XName.Get("name of element","namespace of element")).First();

XElement copyOfOriginalXElement = new XElement(originalXElement);

...do some manipulation of the copy...

originalXElement.ReplaceWith(copyOfOriginalXElement);

originalXDoc.Save("config.file");

I wrote this from memory, so the syntax may be a bit off, but it should work.

CodeGuru123

Thanks for the reply.

Apparently you cannot simply create an XmlNode outside of an XmlDocument..

So, here is what I ended up doing.

Inside of my main config class, I have this property:

public XmlNode FormSettings
{
    get
    {
        return XmlDoc.DocumentElement.SelectSingleNode("/configuration/" + cfgSettings.formSettings);
    }
    set
    {
        XmlNode Root = XmlDoc.DocumentElement.SelectSingleNode("/configuration/" + cfgSettings.formSettings);
        if (Root == null)
        {
            Root = XmlDoc.DocumentElement.SelectSingleNode("/configuration");
            XmlNode newNode = XmlDoc.CreateNode(XmlNodeType.Element, cfgSettings.formSettings, "");
            Root = Root.AppendChild(newNode);
        }
        else
            Root.RemoveAll();
        for (int node = 0 ; node < value.ChildNodes.Count ; node++)
        {
            XmlElement Element = XmlDoc.CreateElement(value.ChildNodes[node].Name);
            for (int attrib = 0 ; attrib < value.ChildNodes[node].Attributes.Count ; attrib++)
                Element.SetAttribute(value.ChildNodes[node].Attributes[attrib].LocalName, value.ChildNodes[node].Attributes[attrib].Value);
            Root.AppendChild(Element); 
        }
    }
}

I can easily parse that node wherever I want, without needing a reference to xmlDoc.

This allows me to put all of the code to build/parse/manage a particular forms config inside of that form class itself, instead of having to put it in the main applicaitons config file class.

To build a node I use the following code:

public XmlNode ConvertToXmlNode()
{
    XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();


    System.Xml.XmlNode Node = xmlDoc.CreateNode(XmlNodeType.Element, "Config", "");


    System.Xml.XmlElement Element = null;


    Element = xmlDoc.CreateElement("Image"); Element.SetAttribute("value", Image); Node.AppendChild(Element);
    

Element = xmlDoc.CreateElement("Background_Color"); Element.SetAttribute("value", Background_Color.ToArgb().ToString()); Node.AppendChild(Element);


    Element = xmlDoc.CreateElement("AntiAlias"); Element.SetAttribute("value", AntiAlias.ToString()); Node.AppendChild(Element);


    return Node;
}

This works very well and makes managing code and configs for many diferent forms much easier than the previous method where I defined all of the configurable params inside of the parent xml/cfg class itself.

Now I can easily insert/remove forms/modules to my app without having to hack up a config class as well with a ton of properties.

I hope this helps someone searching in the future...

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

Simply use the XmlNode.OwnerDocument property to get a reference to the document that a particular node belongs to.

CodeGuru123

In reply to Sven Groot

#Nov 5th @ 7:08 PM

I suppose I could do that, but then that would spaghetti my code up.

With my method, I can take an xml node from any document, and parse it into my variables. Then, I can generate the xml node from within the class that uses those variables, and pass that node to any xml document handler class for storage.

Thus, I can easily store this node in the main applications xml config file, as well as create mini import/exmport templates in xml format for people to share their configs with others.