Question

Writing my first complex XML schema I’m perhaps still thinking to object oriented and not sure what the best practices are. This is mainly because I haven’t spent much time reading from XML files in code.

One thing I tend to do is putting all collections inside it’s own element. Let’s come up with a scenario. I’m doing a schema for a person type and I wan’t to keep info about the persons cars among other things.

I always do this:

<xs:element name="Person">
    <xs:complexType>
        <xs:sequence>
            <xs:element name="Name" type="xs:string"/>
            <xs:element name="Address" type="xs:string"/>
            <xs:element name="Cars">
                <xs:complexType>
                    <xs:sequence>
                        <xs:element name="Car" type="CarType" maxOccurs="unbounded" />
                    </xs:sequence>
                </xs:complexType>
            </xs:element>
        </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
</xs:element>

But supposedly this is possible and perhaps even better:

<xs:element name="Person">
    <xs:complexType>
        <xs:sequence>
          <xs:element name="Name" type="xs:string"/>
          <xs:element name="Address" type="xs:string"/>
          <xs:element name="Cars" type="CarType" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
        </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
</xs:element>

When I read from a XML file using C# and/or Linq-to-XML which method is better?

I tend to do my thing because I feel like a collection should sit inside it’s own tags instead of along with the properties that are singular like name and address.

Answer 1

When using LINQ to XML, you could say that having the elements directly under the Person node would be better. Compare

person.Elements("Car")

with

person.Element("Cars").Elements()

But I would personally prefer special collection element too, I think it’s cleaner. Why do you think the other way is supposedly better? Who said that?