Question

I’ve 2 questions:

First, I’ve a dataset with 5 tables. I’ve made the relationships of tables and generating an XML from this dataset like this:

StreamWriter xmlDoc = new StreamWriter("myxml.xml", false);
ds.WriteXml(xmlDoc);
xmlDoc.Close();

Some of the fields in each table in dataset are primary keys and I dont want to show them in XML. If I exclude them from tables, I cant make relationships. Can anybody give me some idea that how to write dataset to XML “droping” the key fields (columns in datatables)? For example, here is the XML generating at the moment:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<o>
    <sp spname="SP1" spid="8">
        <event spid="8" eventname="Event1" eventId="482">
            <bm bmname="BM1" bmid="2" bmeid="826" eventid="482">
                <att bmeid="826" val="3.00" attname="Att1" atttype="Type1" attid="23172"/> 
                <att bmeid="826" val="3.50" attname="Att2" bettype="Type1" attid="23173"/>
           </bm>
        </event>
    </sp>
</o>

but I want this XML to be generated like this (all id attributes should be “dropped” as all ids are for relationships and should not be added in XML):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<o>
    <sp spname="SP1">
        <event eventname="Event1">
            <bm bmname="BM1" bmid="2">
                <att val="3.00" attname="Att1" atttype="Type1" /> 
                <att val="3.50" attname="Att2" bettype="Type1" />
           </bm>
        </event>
    </sp>
</o>

And now 2nd question:

I’ve given name to my dataset as “o” so its generating the xml as you can see above. I want to add some attributes to <o> node like current datetime. I mean I want <o> node to be genrated as <o generatedDate="09/13/2011" generatedTime="03:45 PM">. How can I achieve it?

Thanks,

Answer 1

I would suggest after generating the XML, use LINQ to XML to filter out / add attribute to desired nodes. This filtering and adding attribute is a separate step then generating the XML from data set and should be handled after the XML is generated from data set as that would lead to better design.