C# XML writer - Which types/objects to use?-CodePudding

Intro: Hi fellow coders; I created a project to create XML files to automate filecreation with certain settings.

Issue: my knowledge isn't sufficient to recreate this. I can't find the right information on two questions;

A. How to create an element inside an element (using a second writestartelement closes the first one);

B. On line 3 there's an element which I do not recognise. Can anybody tell me which type I should be looking for on the net?

<userEnvironmentSettings>
    <conditions>
        <ref n="Printer - PR123456.xml" />
    </conditions>
</userEnvironmentSettings>

Current code (Will keep this up to date)

                writer.WriteStartElement("userEnvironmentSettings");
                writer.WriteStartElement("conditions");
                writer.WriteAttributeString("ref n", "Printer - "   printerName   ".xml\"");
                writer.WriteEndElement();
                writer.WriteEndElement();
                writer.Flush();

Result: $exception as per a whitespace cannot be set inside Attributestring.

CodePudding user response：

You need an element called ref with an attribute called n. What you've tried to do is create an attribute called ref n within the conditions element, which is not allowed (as it contains whitespace) and is not what you want. So this would work:

writer.WriteStartElement("userEnvironmentSettings");
writer.WriteStartElement("conditions");
writer.WriteStartElement("ref");
writer.WriteAttributeString("n", "Printer - PR123456.xml");
writer.WriteEndElement();
writer.WriteEndElement();
writer.WriteEndElement();

However, unless you have good reason I'd strongly suggest you don't use XmlWriter directly. There are much easier, higher-level APIs you can use. For example:

var doc = new XDocument(
    new XElement("userEnvironmentSettings",
        new XElement("conditions",
            new XElement("ref",
                new XAttribute("n", "Printer - PR123456.xml")
            ))));
doc.Save(fileName);