How to use XmlReader class?

MSDN has a simple example to get you started here.

If you're interested in reading and writing XML documents, and not just specifically using the XmlReader class, there's a nice article covering a few of your options here.

But if you just want to get started and play around, try this:

 XmlReaderSettings settings = new XmlReaderSettings(); settings.IgnoreWhitespace = true; settings.IgnoreComments = true; XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create("file.xml", settings);

Personally I have switched away from XMLReader to System.XML.Linq.XDocument to manage my XML data files. This way I can easily pull data from xml into objects and manage them like any other object in my program. When I am done manipulating them I can just save the changes back out the the xml file at any time.

        //Load my xml document        XDocument myData = XDocument.Load(PhysicalApplicationPath + "/Data.xml");        //Create my new object        HelpItem newitem = new HelpItem();        newitem.Answer = answer;        newitem.Question = question;        newitem.Category = category;        //Find the Parent Node and then add the new item to it.        XElement helpItems = myData.Descendants("HelpItems").First();        helpItems.Add(newitem.XmlHelpItem());        //then save it back out to the file system        myData.Save(PhysicalApplicationPath + "/Data.xml");

If I want to use this data in an easily managed data set I can bind it to a list of my objects.

        List<HelpItem> helpitems = (from helpitem in myData.Descendants("HelpItem")                  select new HelpItem                  {                       Category = helpitem.Element("Category").Value,                       Question = helpitem.Element("Question").Value,                       Answer = helpitem.Element("Answer").Value,                  }).ToList<HelpItem>();

Now it can be passed around and manipulated with any inherent functions of my object class.

For convenience my class has a function to create itself as an xml node.

public XElement XmlHelpItem()    {        XElement helpitem = new XElement("HelpItem");        XElement category = new XElement("Category", Category);        XElement question = new XElement("Question", Question);        XElement answer = new XElement("Answer", Answer);        helpitem.Add(category);        helpitem.Add(question);        helpitem.Add(answer);        return helpitem;    }

You should use the Create method instead of using new, since XmlReader is an abstract class using the Factory pattern.

var xmlReader = XmlReader.Create("xmlfile.xml");