Question

I have an XmlTextWriter writing to a file and an XmlWriter using that text writer. This text writer is set to output tab-indented XML:

XmlTextWriter xtw = new XmlTextWriter("foo.xml", Encoding.UTF8);
xtw.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
xtw.IndentChar = '\t';
xtw.Indentation = 1;

XmlWriter xw = XmlWriter.Create(xtw);

---

Changed per Jeff’s MSDN link:

XmlWriterSettings set = new XmlWriterSettings();
set.Indent = true;
set.IndentChars = "\t";
set.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8;

xw = XmlWriter.Create(f, set);

This does not change the end result.

---

Now I’m an arbitrary depth in my XmlWriter and I’m getting a string of XML from elsewhere (that I cannot control) that is a single-line, non-indented XML. If I call xw.WriteRaw() then that string is injected verbatim and does not follow my indentation I want.

...
string xml = ExternalMethod();
xw.WriteRaw(xml);
...

Essentially, I want a WriteRaw that will parse the XML string and go through all the WriteStartElement, etc. so that it gets reformatted per the XmlTextWriter’s settings.

My preference is a way to do this with the setup I already have and to do this without having to reload the final XML just to reformat it. I’d also prefer not to parse the XML string with the likes of XmlReader and then mimic what it finds into my XmlWriter (very very manual process).

At the end of this I’d rather have a simple solution than one that follows my preferences. (Best solution, naturally, would be simple and follows my preferences.)

Answer 1

How about using a XmlReader to read the xml as xml nodes?

string xml = ExternalMethod();
XmlReader reader =  XmlReader.Create(new StringReader(xml));
xw.WriteNode(reader, true);