How to save this string into XML file?

Question

I have this string variable:

string xml = @"<Contacts> 
    <Contact> 
    <Name>Patrick Hines</Name> 
    <Phone Type=""Home"">206-555-0144</Phone> 
    <Phone Type=""Work"">425-555-0145</Phone> 
    <Phone Type=""Mobile"">332-899-5678</Phone> 
    <Address> 
        <Street1>123 Main St</Street1> 
        <City>Mercer Island</City> 
        <State>WA</State> 
        <Postal>68042</Postal> 
    </Address> 
    </Contact> 
    <Contact> 
    <Name>Dorothy Lee</Name> 
    <Phone Type=""Home"">910-555-1212</Phone> 
    <Phone Type=""Work"">336-555-0123</Phone> 
    <Phone Type=""Mobile"">336-555-0005</Phone> 
    <Address> 
        <Street1>16 Friar Duck Ln</Street1> 
        <City>Greensboro</City> 
        <State>NC</State> 
        <Postal>27410</Postal> 
    </Address> 
    </Contact>
</Contacts>";

How can I save this string into an XML file in my drive c? Using c#.

Use System.IO.File class methods.

KV Prajapati
– KV Prajapati

2011-01-18 08:06:22 +00:00
Commented Jan 18, 2011 at 8:06 — KV Prajapati
– KV Prajapati, Commented Jan 18, 2011 at 8:06

Jon Skeet · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-18 08:07:31Z

70

The fact that it's XML is basically irrelevant. You can save any text to a file very simply with File.WriteAllText:

File.WriteAllText("foo.xml", xml);

Note that you can also specify the encoding, which defaults to UTF-8. So for example, if you want to write a file in plain ASCII:

File.WriteAllText("foo.xml", xml, Encoding.ASCII);

answered Jan 18, 2011 at 8:07

Jon Skeet

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15 Comments

yonan2236 Over a year ago

what if sir if i want to read my saved xml back into my program as a string? Should I use XmlTextReader?

Ani Over a year ago

@yonan2236: Then just use File.ReadAllText. As Jon Skeet says, you don't really appear to be doing anything XML-specific; you only want to do basic file I/O on text data?

Jon Skeet Over a year ago

@yonan2236: It's not that the question is wrong as such - it's more that it's mixing two concepts: saving a text file, and the contents of the text file being XML.

James Walford Over a year ago

I'd also recommend adding an XML declaration to the string, and ensuring the encoding in the declaration matches that in the WriteAllText method. It's likely to save a fair amount of hassle at later date, judging by the frequency of XML encoding questions on stackoverflow.

Jon Skeet Over a year ago

@stt106: Well that just means that your string contains the text encoding="utf-16". That wouldn't be changed by any encoding specified in File.WriteAllText - it's just part of the string. The file will still be encoded in UTF-8, meaning that the XML declaration is effectively lying.

|

BvdVen · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-18 08:07:25Z

13

XmlDocument xdoc = new XmlDocument();
xdoc.LoadXml(yourXMLString);
xdoc.Save("myfilename.xml");

answered Jan 18, 2011 at 8:07

BvdVen

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Comments

Ani · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-18 08:34:30Z

8

If you don't need to do any processing on the string (with an XML library, for example), you could just do:

File.WriteAllText(@"c:\myXml.xml", xml);

edited Jan 18, 2011 at 8:34

answered Jan 18, 2011 at 8:07

Ani

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1 Comment

Tim Lloyd Over a year ago

+1 For using correct path, should save some head-scratching for the OP. :)

Itay Karo · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-18 08:07:49Z

6

System.IO.File.WriteAllText("filename.xml", xml );

answered Jan 18, 2011 at 8:07

Itay Karo

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Comments

Daniel Caballero · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-02 16:55:14Z

3

You can do this:

string path = @"C:\testfolder\testfile.txt";

using (System.IO.StreamWriter file = new System.IO.StreamWriter(path))
{    
    file.Write(text);  
}

You can also do this after you've created an XML Document, but it is slower:

xdoc.Save

edited Oct 2, 2012 at 16:55

answered Oct 1, 2012 at 22:36

Daniel Caballero

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Comments

James Walford · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-18 11:06:34Z

If you want to save the string as-is without performing any check on whether it's well-formed or valid, then as has been answered above, use System.IO.File.WriteAllText("C:\myfilename.xml", xml );

As has also been noted, this defaults to saving the file as UTF-8, but you can specify encoding as Jon Skeet mentioned.

I'd recommend adding an XML declaration to the string, e.g.,

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

and ensuring the encoding in the declaration matches that in the WriteAllText method. It's likely to save a fair amount of hassle at later date, judging by the frequency of XML encoding questions on stackoverflow.

If you want to ensure the XML is well-formed and/or valid, then you will need to use an XML parser on it first, such as XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(str); That method is also overridden if you want to preserve whitespace: XDocument.Parse(str, LoadOptions.PreserveWhitespace)

You can then perform validation on it http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb340331.aspx

before saving to file: doc.Save("C:\myfilename.xml");

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