Develop Reference

adding attributes to elements

I am seralising a C# class into an xml, all good except the namespace attributes are not getting inserted into the xml file.
tried the following above the Document as well as the Documents property:
[XmlAttribute("xmlns:xsi",Namespace ="www.test.com")]
[XmlAttribute("xsi:type",Namespace ="somename")]
but that didn’t work :(
The xml I want to appear in the xml file is:
<someOtherElement></someOtherElement>
<someOtherElement></someOtherElement>
<Documents>
<Document xmlns:xsi="www.test.com" xsi:type=“somename”>
<Name></Name>
<DOB></DOB>
</Document>
</Documents>
<someOtherElement></someOtherElement>
<someOtherElement></someOtherElement>
Would love any feedback. Thanks!

The following worked for the "somename" attribute:
[xmlAttribute(Namespace =
System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema.InstanceNamespace)]
public string someAttr {get;set} = "somename"
however still figuring out the xmlns:xsi attribute

Adding XElement to XDocument with same namespace

I have a XDocument with the following structure where I want to add a bunch of XElements.
<Document xmlns="urn:iso:std:iso:20022:tech:xsd:pain.001.001.03">
<CstmrCdtTrfInitn>
<GrpHdr>
...
</GrpHdr>
<!-- loaded nodes go here -->
<CstmrCdtTrfInitn>
</Document>
The XElements have the following structure:
<PmtInf xmlns="urn:iso:std:iso:20022:tech:xsd:pain.001.001.03">
...
</PmtInf>
The problem is that the namespace in child nodes is not supported at the recipients side and since it is the same as the XDocument's namespace - it is redundant. How do I avoid/remove that namespace on the child nodes?
The code that I use right now:
var childNodes = new XElement(NameSpace + "GrpHdr", ...);
XElement[] loadedNodes = ...;//Loads from a service using XElement.Load
var content = new XElement(NameSpace + "CstmrCdtTrfInitn", childNodes,loadedNodes));

When calling Save on XElement or XDocument, there is a flags enum SaveOptions that allow you to control to some extent how the document is written to XML.
The easiest way to achieve what you want (without traversing the structure to remove the redundant attributes) is to use one of these flags: OmitDuplicateNamespaces.
Remove the duplicate namespace declarations while serializing.
You can see in this fiddle that adding this flag changes my example output from this:
<Document xmlns="urn:iso:std:iso:20022:tech:xsd:pain.001.001.03">
<CstmrCdtTrfInitn>
<GrpHdr />
<PmtInf xmlns="urn:iso:std:iso:20022:tech:xsd:pain.001.001.03">...</PmtInf>
</CstmrCdtTrfInitn>
</Document>
To this:
<Document xmlns="urn:iso:std:iso:20022:tech:xsd:pain.001.001.03">
<CstmrCdtTrfInitn>
<GrpHdr />
<PmtInf>...</PmtInf>
</CstmrCdtTrfInitn>
</Document>

XML: let child-node inherit parent-node namespace?

I'm trying to create some xml nodes runtime using XPath for C#. See XML Below:
<Package xmlns:m2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/2013/manifest" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/2010/manifest">
<Application>
<m2:VisualElements>
<!--- INSERT CHILD NODES HERE WHICH ALSO HAVE NAMESPACE 'm2' ---->
</m2:VisualElements>
</Application>
</Package>
Currently I'm doing the following:
XElement visualElements = doc.Descendants().SingleOrDefault(p => p.Name.LocalName == "VisualElements");
visualElements.Add(new XElement(doc.Root.GetDefaultNamespace() + "InitialRotationPreference"));
I know that this is wrong since I reference the default namespace, this will result in this being added:
<InitialRotationPreference />
When I want:
<m2:InitialRotationPreference />
Is there some way to access the parent-nodes namespace (m2) without "knowing" the prefix or the namespace-url?
Thank you!

Your document root's namespace is http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/2010/manifest. Use the one from VisualElements:
XName name = visualElements.Name.Namespace + "InitialRotationPreference"
Or specify explicitly:
XName name = XName.Get("InitialRotationPreference",
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/2013/manifest");
Then add an element with that name:
visualElements.Add(new XElement(name));

XPath not working

I am trying to read the entitysets within the EDMX file from Entity Framework.
The EDMX file (XML format) has the following layout:
<edmx:Edmx Version="3.0" xmlns:edmx="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2009/11/edmx">
<edmx:Runtime>
<edmx:ConceptualModels>
<Schema Namespace="Model" Alias="Self" p1:UseStrongSpatialTypes="false" xmlns:annotation="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2009/02/edm/annotation" xmlns:p1="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2009/02/edm/annotation" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2009/11/edm">
<EntityContainer Name="EntityModel" p1:LazyLoadingEnabled="true">
<EntitySet Name="TableName" EntityType="Model.TableName" />
I am using following XPath to get all EntitySet Nodes within the EntityContainer:
/edmx:Edmx/edmx:Runtime/edmx:ConceptualModels/Schema/EntityContainer/EntitySet
but I am getting no result with this C# code:
XmlDocument xdoc = new XmlDocument("pathtoedmx");
var ns = new XmlNamespaceManager(xdoc.NameTable);
ns.AddNamespace("edmx", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2009/11/edmx");
ns.AddNamespace("annotation", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2009/02/edm/annotation");
ns.AddNamespace("p1", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2009/02/edm/annotation");
ns.AddNamespace("", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2009/11/edm");
var entitySets = xdoc.SelectNodes("/edmx:Edmx/edmx:Runtime/edmx:ConceptualModels/Schema/EntityContainer/EntitySet", ns);
Already got the XPath from this tool (http://qutoric.com/xmlquire/), because I started not trusting my own XPath skills but it tells me the same XPath I was already using.
If I remove the "/Schema/EntityContainer/EntitySet" part its finding the "/edmx:Edmx/edmx:Runtime/edmx:ConceptualModels", but not further on already tried to specify the "edmx" namespace ("edmx:/Schema") but no difference.
Hope you can help me out, already banging my head against the table. :)

Namespaces are a convention on how to combine two different XML dialects into a single document. Those prefixes really doesn't matter as long you keep your URI component exactly the same. For instance, take something like this:
ns.AddNamespace("xxx", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2009/11/edmx");
Console.WriteLine(xdoc.SelectNodes("/xxx:Edmx", ns).Count); // 1
You'll get one node because your namespace URI matched, despite your "wrong" namespace prefix.
If you have an attribute named xmlns, current element and it's children will inherits that namespace URI.
In your case, your root element doesn't have a default namespace and that's ok. But your Schemas element does have a namespace and you need to inform it. I came with this code:
// change "" to "edm"
ns.AddNamespace("edm", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2009/11/edm");
var entitySets = xdoc.SelectNodes("/edmx:Edmx/edmx:Runtime/edmx:ConceptualModels/edm:Schema/edm:EntityContainer/edm:EntitySet", ns);

Converting an XML document to fluent C#

I'd like to convert an external XML document without any XSD schema associated with it into a fluent .NET object.
I have a simple XML file like:
<application>
<parameters>
<param></param>
<param></param>
</parameters>
<generation />
<entities>
<entity ID="1">
<PropTest>Test</PropTest>
</entity>
<entity ID="2">
<PropTest>Another Test</PropTest>
</entity>
</entities>
</application>
I'd like to navigate the document like:
var xConfig = new XmlConfig("file.xml");
// testValue should be assigned "Test"
string testValue = xConfig.Generation.Entities.Entity(1).PropTest;
What is the best way to achieve this in .NET 3.5?

Arguably, the best way to do this these days is with Linq to XML. It is a whole lot easier than messing with XSDs and convoluted class definitions.
XDocument doc = XDocument.Load("file.xml");
var val = doc
.Descendants("entity")
.Where(p => p.Attribute("ID").Value == "1")
.Descendants("PropTest")
.FirstOrDefault();
if (val != null)
Console.WriteLine(val.Value);
The sample file.xml that I used was:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<application>
<parameters>
<param></param>
<param></param>
</parameters>
<generation>
<entities>
<entity ID="1">
<PropTest>Test</PropTest>
</entity>
<entity ID="2">Another Test</entity>
</entities>
</generation>
</application>

I just noticed that Lusid also wrote about Linq to SQL while I was writing my answer, but he used XDocument.
Here is my version (file.xml is the XML given in the question):
string testValue =
(string) XElement.Load("file.xml")
.Element("entities")
.Elements("entity")
.FirstOrDefault(entity => entity.Attribute("ID")
.Value == "1") ?? string.Empty;

I would look at xsd.exe. You can also go here for a more informative tutorial on how to use it.
Basically you will be create .NET class equivalents of your XSD. You will then be able to serialize and deserialize your XML and objects.

Kevin Hazzard has written a fluent XML interface for C# using the .NET 4.0 dynamic type part 1 and part 2. This would allow code like:
var v = dx.application.entities.entity[0].PropTest.Value;

If you just extract the schema(which should be easy with xsd.exe) then this online tool (which can also be downloaded) could help you, I tried it and it's ok.

Define classes derived from ConfigurationSection/ConfigurationElement etc. They map to xml files nicely (that's what they'r built for) See MSDN for this. Another way is to create POCO objects and set XML serialization attributes over properties then use System.XML.XMLSerializer to serialize/deserialize to/from XML. See MSDN for XML Serialization.