XmlWriter to Write to a String Instead of to a File

Question

I have a WCF service that needs to return a string of XML   But it seems like the writer only wants to build up a file  not a string   I tried   string nextXMLstring       using  XmlWriter writer   XmlWriter Create nextXMLstring     This generates an error saying nextXMLstring doesnt have a file path   It wants something like   using  XmlWriter writer   XmlWriter Create  nextXMLstring xml      How can I build up my XML and then return it as a string    Thanks

User · Answer

Well I think the simplest and fastest solution here would be just to   StringBuilder sb   new StringBuilder     using  var writer   XmlWriter Create sb  settings                Whatever code you have need         sb   sb Replace  encoding   utf-16      encoding   utf-8        Or whatever uft you want use        Before you finally save it      File WriteAllText  path  dataName xml   sb ToString

User · Answer

As Richard said  StringWriter is the way forward  There s one snag  however  by default  StringWriter will advertise itself as being in UTF-16  Usually XML is in UTF-8  You can fix this by subclassing StringWriter   public class Utf8StringWriter   StringWriter       public override Encoding Encoding                get   return Encoding UTF8              This will affect the declaration written by XmlWriter  Of course  if you then write the string out elsewhere in binary form  make sure you use an encoding which matches whichever encoding you fix for the StringWriter   The above code always assumes UTF-8  it s trivial to make a more general version which accepts an encoding in the constructor    You d then use   using  TextWriter writer   new Utf8StringWriter          using  XmlWriter xmlWriter   XmlWriter Create writer                               return writer ToString

User · Answer

You need to create a StringWriter  and pass that to the XmlWriter   The string overload of the XmlWriter Create is for a filename   E g   using  var sw   new StringWriter        using  var xw   XmlWriter Create sw            Build Xml with xw          return sw ToString

User · Answer

Use StringBuilder   var sb   new StringBuilder        using  XmlWriter xmlWriter   XmlWriter Create sb                           return sb ToString

User · Answer

Guys don t forget to call xmlWriter Close   and xmlWriter Dispose   or else your string won t finish creating  It will just be an empty string

User · Answer

I know this is old and answered  but here is another way to do it  Particularly if you don t want the UTF8 BOM at the start of your string and you want the text indented   using  var ms   new MemoryStream    using  var x   new XmlTextWriter ms  new UTF8Encoding false                         Formatting   Formatting Indented                       return Encoding UTF8 GetString ms ToArray

[c#] XmlWriter to Write to a String Instead of to a File

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