{"id":398,"date":"2011-05-05T10:34:06","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T10:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericwhite.com\/home2\/bm8qcmjy\/public_html\/blog\/?p=398"},"modified":"2011-05-05T14:36:52","modified_gmt":"2011-05-05T14:36:52","slug":"align-attributes-when-formatting-xml-using-linq-to-xml","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericwhite.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/05\/align-attributes-when-formatting-xml-using-linq-to-xml\/","title":{"rendered":"Align Attributes when Formatting XML using LINQ to XML"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post that showed how to align attributes<\/a> when formatting XML using LINQ to XML. Here is an extension method that uses that technique.<\/p>\n


\nusing System;
\nusing System.Collections.Generic;
\nusing System.Linq;
\nusing System.Text;
\nusing System.Text.RegularExpressions;
\nusing System.Xml;
\nusing System.Xml.Linq;<\/p>\n

namespace ConsoleApplication1
\n{
\n    public static class Extensions
\n    {
\n        public static string ToStringAlignAttributes(this XContainer xContainer)
\n        {
\n            XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings();
\n            settings.Indent = true;
\n            settings.OmitXmlDeclaration = true;
\n            settings.NewLineOnAttributes = true;
\n            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
\n            using (XmlWriter xmlWriter = XmlWriter.Create(sb, settings))
\n                xContainer.WriteTo(xmlWriter);
\n            return sb.ToString();
\n        }
\n    }<\/p>\n

    class Program
\n    {
\n        static void Main(string[] args)
\n        {
\n            XDocument doc = new XDocument(
\n                new XElement(\"Root\",
\n                    new XAttribute(\"att1\", 1),
\n                    new XAttribute(\"att2\", 2),
\n                    new XAttribute(\"att3\", 3),
\n                    new XElement(\"Child\",
\n                        new XAttribute(\"att1\", 1),
\n                        new XAttribute(\"att2\", 2),
\n                        new XAttribute(\"att3\", 3))));
\n            Console.WriteLine(doc.ToStringAlignAttributes());<\/p>\n

            XElement el = new XElement(\"Root\",
\n                new XAttribute(\"att1\", 1),
\n                new XAttribute(\"att2\", 2),
\n                new XAttribute(\"att3\", 3),
\n                new XElement(\"Child\",
\n                    new XAttribute(\"att1\", 1),
\n                    new XAttribute(\"att2\", 2),
\n                    new XAttribute(\"att3\", 3)));
\n            Console.WriteLine(el.ToStringAlignAttributes());
\n        }
\n    }
\n}
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

Update: May 5, 2011 – I initially wrote a more fancy version of this, but as it turns out, I got it wrong – it didn’t properly indent some cases of some XML documents, so am reverting the code. When I get a chance, I’ll work out the issues with the code that implements more fancy alignment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shows how to align attributes when serializing XML using LINQ to XML.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linq-to-xml"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericwhite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericwhite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericwhite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericwhite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericwhite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericwhite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericwhite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericwhite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericwhite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericwhite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}