Question

In native programming the IXMLDOMDocument2 object had a tranformNode() method:

public BSTR transformNode(IXMLDOMNode stylesheet); 

So in the end I could transform an XML document using:

public string TransformDocument(IXMLDOMDocument2 doc, IXMLDOMDocument2 stylesheet) {    return doc.TransformNode(stylesheet); } 

I’m trying to find the managed equivalent. I’ve already discovered XmlDocument object:

public string TransformDocument(XmlDocument doc, XmlDocument stylesheet) {    //return doc.TransformNode(stylesheet); //TransformNode not supported } 

So what is the managed way to transform xml?

I’ve stumbled across the deprecated XslTransform object, but none of the 18 overloads takes an xml document, or an xml stylesheet.

The replacement Microsoft indicates is the mouthful: System.Xml.Xsl.XslCompiledTransform. But like it’s deprecated cousin, none of XslCompiledTransform’s 14 overloads takes xml in an input parameter.

So what’s the accepted method to transform xml in C# .NET 2.0?

Put it another way: complete the following helper method:

public string TransformDocument(XmlDocument doc, XmlDocument stylesheet) {    //todo: figure out how to transform xml in C# } 

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Answer

Waqas had the answer. Here is another, very similar, solution:

/// <summary> /// This method simulates the XMLDOMDocument.TransformNode method /// </summary> /// <param name='doc'>XML document to be transformed</param> /// <param name='stylesheet'>The stylesheet to transform with</param> /// <returns></returns> public static string Transform(XmlDocument doc, XmlDocument stylesheet) {     XslCompiledTransform transform = new XslCompiledTransform();     transform.Load(stylesheet); // compiled stylesheet      System.IO.StringWriter writer = new System.IO.StringWriter();     transform.Transform(doc, XmlWriter.Create(writer));      return writer.ToString();    } 

Note: If you’re a performance weenie, you might want to create an overload to pass the pre-compiled transform, if you’re going to transforming more than once.

public static string Transform(XmlDocument doc, XslCompiledTransform stylesheet) {    ... } 

Answer 1

The functions take IXPathNavigable objects as input (and XmlDoucment/XmlNode classes implement IXPathNavigable).

Here’s how it would work:

public string TransformDocument(XmlDocument doc, XmlDocument stylesheet) {    XslCompiledTransform transform = new XslCompiledTransform();    transform.Load(stylesheet); // compiled stylesheet    System.IO.StringWriter writer = new System.IO.StringWriter();    transform.Transform(doc, null, writer);    return writer.ToString(); } 

Optimizations and improvements:

• Cache the compiled stylesheet if you use it more than once.
• Load the XSL directly into the XslCompiledTransform instead of building an XmlDocument first.
• Use XmlNode instead of XmlDocument to make the function more generic.