How to add data to an existing xml file in c#

Question

I'm using this c# code to write data to xml file:

Employee[] employees = new Employee[2];
employees[0] = new Employee(1, "David", "Smith", 10000);
employees[1] = new Employee(12, "Cecil", "Walker", 120000);

using (XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create("employees.xml"))
{
    writer.WriteStartDocument();
    writer.WriteStartElement("Employees");

    foreach (Employee employee in employees)
    {
    writer.WriteStartElement("Employee");

    writer.WriteElementString("ID", employee.Id.ToString());
    writer.WriteElementString("FirstName", employee.FirstName);
    writer.WriteElementString("LastName", employee.LastName);
    writer.WriteElementString("Salary", employee.Salary.ToString());

    writer.WriteEndElement();
    }

    writer.WriteEndElement();
    writer.WriteEndDocument();
}

Now suppose I restart my application and I want to add new data to the xml file without losing the existed data, using the same way will overwrite the data on my xml file, I tried to figure out how to do that and I searched for a similar example but I couldn't come to anything , any ideas ??

A simple way would be to read the file into memory, modify it there, and overwrite the file. — Millie Smith
– Millie Smith, Commented Nov 10, 2013 at 20:20
Check out this answer stackoverflow.com/questions/9188574/… — Daniel Gimenez
– Daniel Gimenez, Commented Nov 10, 2013 at 20:21

Ceelie · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-10 23:21:24Z

6

Perhaps you should look at some examples using datasets and xml:

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/13854/Using-XML-as-Database-with-Dataset

or use System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer, when you dont't have amount of records.

Example using XmlDocument

XmlDocument xd = new XmlDocument();
xd.Load("employees.xml");
XmlNode nl = xd.SelectSingleNode("//Employees");
XmlDocument xd2 = new XmlDocument();
xd2.LoadXml("<Employee><ID>20</ID><FirstName>Clair</FirstName><LastName>Doner</LastName><Salary>13000</Salary></Employee>");
XmlNode n = xd.ImportNode(xd2.FirstChild,true);
nl.AppendChild(n);
xd.Save(Console.Out);

answered Nov 10, 2013 at 23:21

Ceelie

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Taha Over a year ago

using the code above and replacing the last line xd.Save("employees.xml"); is what I was looking for, thanks.

Anders Abel · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-10 20:30:44Z

1

Using an xml writer for small amounts of data is awkward. You would be better of using an XDocument that you either initialize from scratch for the first run, or read from an existing file in subsequent runs.

Using XDocument you can manipulate the XML with XElement and XAttribute instances and then write the entire thing out to a file when you want to persist it.

answered Nov 10, 2013 at 20:30

Anders Abel

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1 Comment

Taha Over a year ago

Is there any example ? I'm not sure how deal with this,for example can I load the xml file using XDocument then append new element using XElement ?

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