Question

I want to bind my UI against a collection of XElements and their properties on a webpage. Hypothetically, this could be for any object that represents an XML tree. I’m hoping that there might be a better way of doing this.

Should I use an XPath query to get out the elements of the collection and the attribute values of each (in this case) XElement? Is there a type of object that is designed to ease databinding against XML?

<% foreach(var x in element.Descendants())      {%> <%= DateTime.Parse(x.Attribute['Time']).ToShortDate() %> <% } %> <%-- excuse me, I just vomited a little in my mouth --%> 

Answer 1

I normally use a ‘placeholder’ class with [XmlRoot], [XmlElement], [XmlAttribute] and I have the xml passed to a deserializer which gives me an object of the type of the placeholder. Once this is done, the only thing left to do is some basic DataBinding to a strongly typed object.

Here is a sample class that is ‘Xml Enabled’:

[XmlRoot(ElementName = 'Car', IsNullable = false, Namespace='')] public class Car {     [XmlAttribute(AttributeName = 'Model')]     public string Model { get; set; }     [XmlAttribute(AttributeName = 'Make')]     public string Make { get; set ;} } 

And here is how to deserialize it properly from a file:

public Car ReadXml(string fileLocation) {     XmlSerializer carXml = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Car));      FileStream fs = File.OpenRead(fileLocation);     Car result = imageConfig.Deserialize(fs) as Car;      return result; } 

Of course, you could replace the FileStream by a MemoryStream to read the Xml directly from memory.

Once in the Html, it would translate to something like this:

<!-- It is assumed that MyCar is a public property of the current page. --> <div>    Car Model : <%= MyCar.Model %> <br/>    Car Make : <%= MyCar.Make %> </div>