Question

Posting both question and (one) answer here to see if somebody has a better solution…

I am trying to write formatted XML output from stored procedure to file. My first attempt looked like this:

// the actual command is a stored procedure that returns an XML document, but use this for demo purposes
var xmlCommand = new SqlCommand("SELECT 1 as ID, 'asdf' as Name FOR XML PATH, ROOT('MyData')", conn);
File.WriteAllText("file1.xml", (string)xmlCommand.ExecuteScalar());

Which was nice and short, but the file generated has everything stuffed on one line:

<MyData><row><ID>1</ID><Name>asdf</Name></row></MyData>

I want it to be formatted nicely:

<MyData>
  <row>
    <ID>1</ID>
    <Name>asdf</Name>
  </row>
</MyData>

Answer 1

One approach is to use an XMLDocument and an XMLTextWriter.

using (XmlReader reader = xmlCommand.ExecuteXmlReader())
{
    XmlDocument dom = new XmlDocument();
    dom.Load(reader);

    var settings = new XmlWriterSettings();
    settings.Indent = true;
    settings.OmitXmlDeclaration = true;

    using (var writer = XmlTextWriter.Create("file2.xml", settings))
    {
        dom.WriteContentTo(writer);
    }
}

It gets the job done but it seems like a lot of code to accomplish a simple task.