Adding elements to an xml file in C#

Question

I have an XML file formatted like this:

<Snippets>
  <Snippet name="abc">
    <SnippetCode>
      testcode1
    </SnippetCode>
  </Snippet>

  <Snippet name="xyz">
    <SnippetCode>      
     testcode2
    </SnippetCode>
  </Snippet>

  ...

</Snippets>

I can successfully load the elements using XDocument, but I have trouble adding new elements (there are many functions and most of which I tried didn't work well for me). How would this be done? The new element would contain the snippet name tag and the snippet code tag. My previous approach was to open the file, and manually create the element using a string which although works, is a very bad idea.

What I have tried:

XDocument doc = XDocument.Load(spath);
XElement root = new XElement("Snippet");
root.Add(new XElement("name", "name goes here"));
root.Add(new XElement("SnippetCode", "SnippetCode"));
doc.Element("Snippets").Add(root);
doc.Save(spath);

And the result is this:

<Snippet>
    <name>name goes here</name>
    <SnippetCode>
    code goes here
    </SnippetCode>
</Snippet>

It works fine except that the name tag is generated incorrectly. It should be

<Snippet name="abc"> 

but I can't generate that properly.

Answer 1

You're close, but you want name to be an XAttribute rather than XElement:

 XDocument doc = XDocument.Load(spath); 
 XElement root = new XElement("Snippet"); 
 root.Add(new XAttribute("name", "name goes here")); 
 root.Add(new XElement("SnippetCode", "SnippetCode")); 
 doc.Element("Snippets").Add(root); 
 doc.Save(spath);