Question

I’ve been trying to find out how I could simply reverse the data I get from an xml/order it by date or if I can do that withing the repeater, which renders them on the page.

So here is what I have:

Simply the page reads an xml…

if (!Page.IsPostBack)
        {
            DataSet messages = new DataSet();
            try
            {
                messages.ReadXml(MapPath("~/_xml/messages.xml"));
                myMessages.DataSource = messages;
                myMessages.DataBind();
            }

…and puts the date in a DataSet.

On the page, a repeater renders the data…

<asp:Repeater ID="myMessages" runat="server">
                <HeaderTemplate>
                    <table border="0">
                </HeaderTemplate>
                <ItemTemplate>
                    <div class="message">
                        <div class="messageHeader">
                            <span><p><b><%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "name") %></b> wrote <%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "date") %>:</p></span>
                        </div>
                        <div class="splitLine"></div>
                        <br />
                        <div class="messageText">
                            <span><p><%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "message") %></p></span>
                        </div>
                    </div>
                </ItemTemplate>
                <FooterTemplate>
                    </Table>
                </FooterTemplate>
            </asp:Repeater>

Maybe it’s also possible to just write the data in a different order, like instead of putting new entries to the end of the file just put them at the beginning. But I think that’s not really a solution.

So this is how I write the data into an xml:

var file = Server.MapPath("~/_xml/messages.xml");

var message = new XElement("contact",
new XElement("Name", s_name.Trim()),
new XElement("message", s_message.Trim()),
new XElement("date", DateTime.Now.ToString()));
var doc = new XDocument();

if (ckeckFileExistance(file))
{
     doc = XDocument.Load(file);
     doc.Element("messages").Add(message);
}
else
{
     doc = new XDocument(new XElement("messages", message));
}
doc.Save(file);

It’s a quick and small project. It should be as simple as possible. And again. What I want to do is to make the newest entries appear on the top of the page. Now they appear on the bottom.
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

XDocument messages = XDocument.Load(MapPath("~/_xml/messages.xml"));
myMessages.DataSource = 
    messages.Elements("messages")
    .Elements("contact")
    .OrderByDescending(m => DateTime.Parse(m.Element("date").Value))
myMessages.DataBind();

and change the repeater bindings to

<%# DataBinder.Eval(((XElement)Container.DataItem).Element("date"), "Value")%>

etc