XElement => Add children nodes at run time

SF Developer picture SF Developer · Dec 19, 2011 · Viewed 54.5k times · Source

So let's assume this is what i want to achieve:

<root>
  <name>AAAA</name>
  <last>BBBB</last>
  <children>
     <child>
        <name>XXX</name>
        <last>TTT</last>
     </child>
     <child>
        <name>OOO</name>
        <last>PPP</last>
     </child>
   </children>
</root>

Not sure if using XElement is the simplest way
but this is what I have so far:

 XElement x = new XElement("root",
                  new XElement("name", "AAA"),
                  new XElement("last", "BBB"));

Now I have to add the "children" based on some data i have.
There could be 1,2,3,4 ...

so I need to iterate thru my list to get every single child

foreach (Children c in family)
{
    x.Add(new XElement("child", 
              new XElement("name", "XXX"),
              new XElement("last", "TTT")); 
} 

PROBLEM:

Doing this way I will be missing the "CHILDREN Parent node". If I just add it before the foreach, it will be rendered as a closed node

<children/>

and that's NOT what we want.

QUESTION:

How can I add to the 1st part a parent node and as many as my list has?

Answer

dtb picture dtb · Dec 19, 2011

Try this:

var x = new XElement("root",
             new XElement("name", "AAA"),
             new XElement("last", "BBB"),
             new XElement("children",
                 from c in family
                 select new XElement("child",
                             new XElement("name", "XXX"),
                             new XElement("last", "TTT")
                        )
             )
        );