XML has been an integral part of programming these days since the world of programming is moving towards the web. XML is one of the most useful easier ways to store and transfer data. Microsoft .NET framework utilizes XML to store data and transfer data between applications and remote systems including local, intranet or on the Internet.

In this article we will explore XML classes and namespaces of .NET Framework Class Library and how to use them in VB.NET to read, write and navigate XML documents.

XML Namespaces and Classes

Microsoft .NET Runtime Library contains many classes to work with XML documents. These classes are stored in five namespaces - System.Xml, System.Xml.Schema, System.Xml.Serialization, System.Xml.XPath, and System.Xml.Xsl. The purpose of each of these namespace is different. All classes reside in one single assembly System.Xml.dll assembly.

Before you proceed to use XML classes in your programs, you need to add reference to the System.Xml.dll assembly and use namespaces in your program by using Imports keyword.

First namespace is System.Xml. This namespace contains major classes. This namespace contains many classes to read and write XML documents. In this article, we are going to concentrate on reader and write class. These reader and writer classes are used to read and write XMl documents. These classes are - XmlReader, XmlTextReader, XmlValidatingReader, XmlNodeReader, XmlWriter, and XmlTextWriter. As you can see there are four reader and two writer classes.

The XmlReader class is an abstract bases classes and contains methods and properties to read a document. The Read method reads a node in the stream. Besides reading functionality, this class also contains methods to navigate through a document nodes. Some of these methods are MoveToAttribute, MoveToFirstAttribute, MoveToContent, MoveToFirstContent, MoveToElement and MoveToNextAttribute. ReadString, ReadInnerXml, ReadOuterXml, and ReadStartElement are more read methods. This class also has a method Skip to skip current node and move to next one. We'll see these methods in our sample example.

The XmlTextReader, XmlNodeReader and XmlValidatingReader classes are derived from XmlReader class. As their name explains, they are used to read text, node, and schemas.

The XmlWrite class contains functionality to write data to XML documents. This class provides many write method to write XML document items. This class is base class for XmlTextWriter class, which we'll be using in our sample example.

The XmlNode class plays an important role. Although, this class represents a single node of XML but that could be the root node of an XML document and could represent the entire file. This class is an abstract base class for many useful classes for inserting, removing, and replacing nodes, navigating through the document. It also contains properties to get a parent or child, name, last child, node type and more. Three major classes derived from XmlNode are XmlDocument, XmlDataDocument and XmlDocumentFragment. XmlDocument class represents an XML document and provides methods and properties to load and save a document. It also provides functionality to add XML items such as attributes, comments, spaces, elements, and new nodes. The Load and LoadXml methods can be used to load XML documents and Save method to save a document respectively. XmlDocumentFragment class represents a document fragment, which can be used to add to a document. The XmlDataDocument class provides methods and properties to work with ADO.NET data set objects.

In spite of above discussed classes, System.Xml namespace contains more classes. Few of them are XmlConvert, XmlLinkedNode, and XmlNodeList.

Next namespace in Xml series is System.Xml.Schema. It classes  to work with XML schemas such XmlSchema, XmlSchemaAll, XmlSchemaXPath, XmlSchemaType.

The System.Xml.Serialization namespace contains classes that are used to serialize objects into XML format documents or streams.

The System.Xml.XPath Namespce contains XPath related classes to use XPath specifications. This namespace has following classes  - XPathDocument, XPathExression, XPathNavigator, and XPathNodeIterator.

With the help of XpathDocument, XpathNavigator provides a fast navigation though XML documents. This class contains many Move methods to move through a document.

The System.Xml.Xsl namespace contains classes to work with XSL/T transformations.

Reading XML Documents

In my sample application, I'm using books.xml to read and display its data through XmlTextReader. This file comes with VS.NET samples. You can search this on your machine and change the path of the file in the following line:

Dim textReader As XmlTextReader = New XmlTextReader("books.xml")

Or you can use any XML file.

The XmlTextReader, XmlNodeReader and XmlValidatingReader classes are derived from XmlReader class. Besides XmlReader methods and properties, these classes also contain members to read text, node, and schemas respectively.

I am using XmlTextReader class to read an XML file. You read a file by passing file name as a parameter in constructor.

After creating an instance of XmlTextReader, you call Read method to start reading the document. After read method is called, you can read all information and data stored in a document. XmlReader class has properties such as Name, BaseURI, Depth, LineNumber an so on.

List 1 reads a document and displays a node information using these properties.

List 1: Reading an XML document Properties

' Import System.Xml namespace
Imports System.Xml
Module Module1
Sub Main()
' Create an isntance of XmlTextReader and call Read method to read
the(file)
Dim textReader As XmlTextReader = New
XmlTextReader("C:\\books.xml")
textReader.Read()
' If the node has value
If textReader.HasValue Then
' Move to fist element
textReader.MoveToElement()
Console.WriteLine("XmlTextReader Properties Test")
Console.WriteLine("===================")
' Read this element's properties and display them on console
Console.WriteLine("Name:" + textReader.Name)
Console.WriteLine("Base URI:" + textReader.BaseURI)
Console.WriteLine("Local Name:" + textReader.LocalName)
Console.WriteLine("Attribute Count:" + textReader.AttributeCount.ToString())
Console.WriteLine("Depth:" + textReader.Depth.ToString())
Console.WriteLine("Line Number:" +textReader.LineNumber.ToString())Console.WriteLine("Node Type:" +textReader.NodeType.ToString())Console.WriteLine("Attribute Count:" +textReader.Value.ToString())
End If
End Sub
End Module

The NodeType property of XmlTextReader is important when you want to know the content type of a document. The XmlNodeType enumeration has a member for each type of XML item such as Attribute, CDATA, Element, Comment, Document, DocumentType, Entity, ProcessInstruction, WhiteSpace and so on.

List 2 code sample reads an XML document, finds a node type and writes information at the end with how many node types a document has.

List 2. Retrieving NodeType Information

' Import System.Xml namespace
Imports System.Xml
Module Module1
Sub Main()
Dim ws, pi, dc, cc, ac, et, el, xd As Integer
' Read a document
Dim textReader As XmlTextReader = New XmlTextReader("C:\\books.xml")
' Read until end of file
While textReader.Read()
Dim nType As XmlNodeType = textReader.NodeType
' If node type us a declaration
If nType = XmlNodeType.XmlDeclaration Then
Console.WriteLine("Declaration:" + textReader.Name.ToString())
xd = xd + 1
End If
' if node type is a comment
If nType = XmlNodeType.Comment Then
Console.WriteLine("Comment:" + textReader.Name.ToString())
cc = cc + 1
End If
' if node type us an attribute
If nType = XmlNodeType.Attribute Then
Console.WriteLine("Attribute:" + textReader.Name.ToString())
ac = ac + 1
End If
' if node type is an element
If nType = XmlNodeType.Element Then
Console.WriteLine("Element:" + textReader.Name.ToString())
el = el + 1
End If
' if node type is an entity
If nType = XmlNodeType.Entity Then
Console.WriteLine("Entity:" + textReader.Name.ToString())
et = et + 1
End If
' if node type is a Process Instruction
If nType = XmlNodeType.Entity Then
Console.WriteLine("Entity:" + textReader.Name.ToString())
pi = pi + 1
End If
' if node type a document
If nType = XmlNodeType.DocumentType Then
Console.WriteLine("Document:" + textReader.Name.ToString())
dc = dc + 1
End If
' if node type is white space
If nType = XmlNodeType.Whitespace Then
Console.WriteLine("WhiteSpace:" + textReader.Name.ToString())
ws = ws + 1
End If
End While
Console.WriteLine("Total Comments:" + cc.ToString())
Console.WriteLine("Total Attributes:" + ac.ToString())
Console.WriteLine("Total Elements:" + el.ToString())
Console.WriteLine("Total Entity:" + et.ToString())
Console.WriteLine("Total Process Instructions:" + pi.ToString())
Console.WriteLine("Total Declaration:" + xd.ToString())
Console.WriteLine("Total DocumentType:" + dc.ToString())
Console.WriteLine("Total WhiteSpaces:" + ws.ToString())
End Sub
End Module

Writing XML Documents

The XmlWriter class contains the functionality to write to XML documents. It is an abstract base class used through XmlTextWriter and XmlNodeWriter classes. It contains methods and properties to write to XML documents. This class has many Writexxx method to write every type of item of an XML document. For example, WriteNode, WriteString, WriteAttributes, WriteStartElement, and WriteEndElement are some of them. Some of these methods are used in a start and end pair. For example, to write an element, you need to call WriteStartElement then write a string followed by WriteEndElement.      

Besides many methods, this class has three properties. WriteState, XmlLang, and XmlSpace. The WriteState gets and sets the state of the XmlWriter class. 

Although it's not possible to describe all the Writexxx methods here, let's see some of them here.

First thing we need to do is create an instance of XmlTextWriter using its constructor. XmlTextWriter has three overloaded constructors, which can take a string, stream, or a TextWriter as an argument. We'll pass a string (file name) as an argument, which we're going to create. In my sample example, I create a file myXmlFile.xml in C:\\ dir.