Chapter 10. LINQ to XML

The .NET Framework provides a number of APIs for working with XML data. From Framework 3.5, the primary choice for general-purpose XML document processing is LINQ to XML. LINQ to XML comprises a lightweight LINQ-friendly XML document object model, and a set of supplementary query operators. In most scenarios, it can be considered a complete replacement for the preceding W3C-compliant DOM, a.k.a. XmlDocument.

In this chapter, we concentrate entirely on LINQ to XML. In the following chapter, we cover the more specialized XML types and APIs, including the forward-only reader/writer, the types for working with schemas, stylesheets and XPaths, and the legacy W3C-compliant DOM.