How to read and write simple XML with Silverlight 1.1

Silverlight does not have access to XmlDocument so we must make use of the XmlReader and XmlWriter.

To write:

/// <summary>
/// Write data to XML in Silverlight 1.1
/// </summary>
/// <returns>string in XML format</returns>public string WriteXML()
{
StringBuilder sbuilder = new StringBuilder();
XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(sbuilder);//create an XMLWriter from a StringBuilder
writer.WriteStartDocument();//start xml document tag

//<outerElement>
writer.WriteStartElement("outerElement");

//<innerElement>
writer.WriteStartElement("innerElement");

//<attribute1> of inner element
writer.WriteStartAttribute("attribute1");
writer.WriteString("value of attribute1");
writer.WriteEndAttribute();

//<attribute2> of inner element
writer.WriteStartAttribute("attribute2");
writer.WriteString("value of attribute2");
writer.WriteEndAttribute();

//</innerElement>
writer.WriteEndElement();

//</outerElement>
writer.WriteEndElement();

writer.WriteEndDocument();//end xml document tag
writer.Flush();

return sbuilder.ToString();
}

This will output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<outerElement>
<innerElement attribute1="value of attribute1" attribute2="value of attribute2" />
</outerElement>

To read:

/// <summary>
/// Read data from XML in Silverlight 1.1
/// </summary>
/// <param name="xmlString">string in XML form to read</param>
public void ReadXML(string xmlString)
{
TextReader stream = new StringReader(xmlString);
XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(stream);//create an XML reader
bool hasMore = reader.Read();
while (hasMore)//read till we get to the end
{
//lets just find the inner element and read its attributes
if (reader.IsStartElement() && reader.Name == "innerElement")
{
string at1 = reader.GetAttribute("attribute1");
string at2 = reader.GetAttribute("attribute2");
//todo: do something with the attributes...
}
//if we had other data, we would have logic for each value we wanted to read
hasMore = reader.Read();
}
}

ReadXML(WriteXML()); will read “value of attribute1” and “value of attribute2” (but do nothing with the data).

For readability I have used hard coded string values. For production code, you should define a schema of consts or an enumeration for all element names.