Possible to write XML to memory with XmlWriter?

If you really want to write into memory, pass in a StringWriter or a StringBuilder like this:

using System;using System.Text;using System.Xml;public class Test{    static void Main()    {        XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings();        settings.Indent = true;                StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();        using (XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(builder, settings))        {            writer.WriteStartDocument();            writer.WriteStartElement("root");            writer.WriteStartElement("element");            writer.WriteString("content");            writer.WriteEndElement();            writer.WriteEndElement();            writer.WriteEndDocument();        }        Console.WriteLine(builder);    }}

If you want to write it directly to the response, however, you could pass in HttpResponse.Output which is a TextWriter instead:

using (XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(Response.Output, settings)){    // Write into it here}

Something was missing on my side: flushing the XmlWriter's buffer:

static void Main(){    XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings();    settings.Indent = true;            StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();    using (XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(builder, settings))    {        writer.WriteStartDocument();        writer.WriteStartElement("root");        writer.WriteStartElement("element");        writer.WriteString("content");        writer.WriteEndElement();        writer.WriteEndElement();        writer.WriteEndDocument();        writer.Flush();    }    Console.WriteLine(builder);}

    StringBuilder xml = new StringBuilder();    TextWriter textWriter = new StringWriter(xml);    XmlWriter xmlWriter = new XmlTextWriter(textWriter);

Then, use the xmlWriter to do all the xml writing, and that writes it directly to the StringBuilder.

Edit: Thanks to Jon Skeet's comment:

    StringBuilder xml = new StringBuilder();    XmlWriter xmlWriter = XmlWriter.Create(xml);