XDocument.ToString() drops XML Encoding Tag

Question

Is there any way to get the xml encoding in the toString() Function?

Example:

xml.Save("myfile.xml");

leads to

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Cooperations>
  <Cooperation>
    <CooperationId>xxx</CooperationId>
    <CooperationName>Allianz Konzern</CooperationName>
    <LogicalCustomers>

But

tb_output.Text = xml.toString();

leads to an output like this

<Cooperations>
  <Cooperation>
    <CooperationId>xxx</CooperationId>
    <CooperationName>Allianz Konzern</CooperationName>
    <LogicalCustomers>
    ...

Answer 1

Either explicitly write out the declaration, or use a StringWriter and call Save():

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml.Linq;

class Test
{
    static void Main()
    {
        string xml = @"<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<Cooperations>
  <Cooperation />
</Cooperations>";

        XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(xml);
        StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
        using (TextWriter writer = new StringWriter(builder))
        {
            doc.Save(writer);
        }
        Console.WriteLine(builder);
    }
}

You could easily add that as an extension method:

public static string ToStringWithDeclaration(this XDocument doc)
{
    if (doc == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("doc");
    }
    StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
    using (TextWriter writer = new StringWriter(builder))
    {
        doc.Save(writer);
    }
    return builder.ToString();
}

This has the advantage that it won't go bang if there isn't a declaration :)

Then you can use:

string x = doc.ToStringWithDeclaration();

Note that that will use utf-16 as the encoding, because that's the implicit encoding in StringWriter. You can influence that yourself though by creating a subclass of StringWriter, e.g. to always use UTF-8.