Fill an ASP.NET GridView using data stored in an xml file

XML is a data format very flexible and widely used. With ASP.NET is very simple to insert the data in an xml source into a GridView.

Suppose you have a file like this:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<books>
	<book>
		<title>Programming in XML</title>
		<author>Marc Vince</author>
		<pages>348</pages>
		<category>Programming</category>
	</book>
	
	<book>
		<title>Programming in C#</title>
		<author>Loren Gallipyos</author>
		<pages>234</pages>
		<category>Programming</category>
	</book>
	
	<book>
		<title>Android</title>
		<author>Norman Bert</author>
		<pages>419</pages>
		<category>Operating Systems</category>
	</book>
	
	<book>
		<title>Linux</title>
		<author>Hurth Francy</author>
		<pages>294</pages>
		<category>Operating Systems</category>
	</book>
	
	<book>
		<title>WordPress</title>
		<author>Milena Zarch</author>
		<pages>364</pages>
		<category>CMS</category>
	</book>
	
	<book>
		<title>Joomla!</title>
		<author>Denise Patrics</author>
		<pages>163</pages>
		<category>CMS</category>
	</book>
</books>

An ASP.NET page with a GridView:

Code:

<div>
	<asp:GridView ID="GridViewBooks" runat="server" 
		CellPadding="4" 
		ForeColor="#333333" 
		GridLines="None" 
		Width="500">
		<AlternatingRowStyle BackColor="White" ForeColor="#284775" />
		<EditRowStyle HorizontalAlign="Left" />
		<HeaderStyle BackColor="#5D7B9D" Font-Bold="True" ForeColor="White" />
		<RowStyle BackColor="#F7F6F3" ForeColor="#333333"/>
	</asp:GridView>
</div>

In the code-behind file that you can write code like this:

Code:

try
{
	XmlTextReader xmlTextReader = new XmlTextReader(Server.MapPath("~/public/books.xml"));

	DataSet dataSetBooks = new DataSet();

	dataSetBooks.ReadXml(xmlTextReader);
	GridViewBooks.DataSource = dataSetBooks;
	GridViewBooks.DataBind();
}
catch (Exception excp)
{
	string error =  excp.ToString();
	// Report error message
}

Here is the result for the sample: