Question

Hey i am unable to figure out why this xml is not being generated properly.

Here is my xml being generated:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
   <schedules>

      <schedule>
         <Name>Schedule0</Name>

         <Task 0>
         <description>task0 description</description>
         <done>true</done>
         </Task 0>

         <Task 1>
         <description>task1 description</description>
         <done>true</done>
         </Task 1>   
      </schedule>

     <schedule>
        <Name>Schedule1</Name>
        <Task 0>
        <description>task0 description</description>
        <done>true</done>
        </Task 0>

        <Task 1>
        <description>task1 description</description>
        <done>true</done>
        </Task 1>
    </schedule>

     <schedule>
       <Name>Schedule2</Name>
       <Task 0>
       <description>task0 description</description>
       <done>true</done>
       </Task 0>

       <Task 1>
       <description>task1 description</description>
       <done>true</done>
       </Task 1>
    </schedule>

    <schedule>
     <Name>Schedule3</Name>
     <Task 0>
     <description>task0 description</description>
     <done>true</done>
     </Task 0>

     <Task 1>
     <description>task1 description</description>
     <done>true</done>
     </Task 1>
    </schedule>

    <schedule>
      <Name>Schedule4</Name>
      <Task 0>
      <description>task0 description
      </description>
      <done>true</done>
      </Task 0>

      <Task 1>
      <description>task1 description</description>
      <done>true</done>
      </Task 1>
    </schedu

And my c# code :

        XmlTextWriter xmlwriter = new XmlTextWriter("mojixml",null);

        xmlwriter.WriteStartDocument();
        xmlwriter.WriteStartElement("schedules");

        for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
        {
            xmlwriter.WriteStartElement("schedule");
            xmlwriter.WriteElementString("Name", "Schedule"+i.ToString());

            for (int ii = 0; ii < 2; ii++)
            {
                xmlwriter.WriteStartElement("Task " + ii.ToString());
                xmlwriter.WriteElementString("description", "task"+ii+ " description");
                xmlwriter.WriteElementString("done", "true");
                xmlwriter.WriteEndElement();
            }
            xmlwriter.WriteEndElement();    //schedule
        }

        xmlwriter.WriteEndElement();    //schedules

        xmlwriter.WriteEndDocument();

also when i change the outer loop range from 5 to 3 it doesn’t show any xml(empty file).

Answer 1

You’re never closing or flushing your writer – you’re getting to the end of the program, at which point you’ve got a writer with the XML in its buffer, waiting to be written… but your program just quits. Just putting it in a using statement will do the right thing, disposing of the stream appropriately, even if there’s an exception:

using (XmlTextWriter xmlwriter = new XmlTextWriter("mojixml", null))
{
}

However, it would be better still to use XmlWriter.Create:

using (XmlWriter xmlwriter = XmlWriter.Create("schedules.xml"))
{
}

At this point you’ll also need to fix your generation code not to create an element name with a space in it:

xmlwriter.WriteStartElement("Task " + ii.ToString());
// becomes...
xmlwriter.WriteStartElement("Task" + ii.ToString());

Also note that all those calls to ToString are unnecessary – you can leave the compiler to do that.

Finally, I’d suggest that unless you’re building a huge file, it would be simpler to use LINQ to XML to build a document in memory and then write it out at the end.