What is the best way to parse (big) XML in C# Code?

C# Problem Overview

I'm writing a GIS client tool in C# to retrieve "features" in a GML-based XML schema (sample below) from a server. Extracts are limited to 100,000 features.

I guestimate that the largest extract.xml might get up around 150 megabytes, so obviously DOM parsers are out I've been trying to decide between [XmlSerializer][1] and [XSD.EXE][2] generated bindings --OR-- [XmlReader][3] and a hand-crafted object graph.

Or maybe there's a better way which I haven't considered yet? Like XLINQ, or ????

Please can anybody guide me? Especially with regards to the memory efficiency of any given approach. If not I'll have to "prototype" both solutions and profile them side-by-side.

I'm a bit of a raw prawn in .NET. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanking you. Keith.

Sample XML - upto 100,000 of them, of upto 234,600 coords per feature.

<feature featId="27168306" fType="vegetation" fTypeId="1129" fClass="vegetation" gType="Polygon" ID="0" cLockNr="51598" metadataId="51599" mdFileId="NRM/TIS/VEGETATION/9543_22_v3" dataScale="25000">
  <MultiGeometry>
    <geometryMember>
      <Polygon>
        <outerBoundaryIs>
          <LinearRing>
            <coordinates>153.505004,-27.42196 153.505044,-27.422015 153.503992 .... 172 coordinates omitted to save space ... 153.505004,-27.42196</coordinates>
          </LinearRing>
        </outerBoundaryIs>
      </Polygon>
    </geometryMember>
  </MultiGeometry>
</feature>

[1]: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.serialization.xmlserializer.aspx "XmlSerializer" [2]: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/x6c1kb0s.aspx "XSD.EXE - Visual Studio XML-schema-binder generator tool" [3]: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xmlreader.aspx "XmlReader class"

C# Solutions

Solution 1 - C#

Use XmlReader to parse large XML documents. XmlReader provides fast, forward-only, non-cached access to XML data. (Forward-only means you can read the XML file from beginning to end but cannot move backwards in the file.) XmlReader uses small amounts of memory, and is equivalent to using a simple SAX reader.

    using (XmlReader myReader = XmlReader.Create(@"c:\data\coords.xml"))
    {
        while (myReader.Read())
        {
           // Process each node (myReader.Value) here
           // ...
        }
    }

You can use XmlReader to process files that are up to 2 gigabytes (GB) in size.

Ref: How to read XML from a file by using Visual C#

Solution 2 - C#

Asat 14 May 2009: I've switched to using a hybrid approach... see code below.

This version has most of the advantages of both:
* the XmlReader/XmlTextReader (memory efficiency --> speed); and
* the XmlSerializer (code-gen --> development expediancy and flexibility).

It uses the XmlTextReader to iterate through the document, and creates "doclets" which it deserializes using the XmlSerializer and "XML binding" classes generated with XSD.EXE.

I guess this recipe is universally applicable, and it's fast... I'm parsing a 201 MB XML Document containing 56,000 GML Features in about 7 seconds... the old VB6 implementation of this application took minutes (or even hours) to parse large extracts... so I'm lookin' good to go.

Once again, a BIG Thank You to the forumites for donating your valuable time. I really appreciate it.

Cheers all. Keith.

using System;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Generic;

using nrw_rime_extract.utils;
using nrw_rime_extract.xml.generated_bindings;

namespace nrw_rime_extract.xml
{
    internal interface ExtractXmlReader
    {
        rimeType read(string xmlFilename);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// RimeExtractXml provides bindings to the RIME Extract XML as defined by
    /// $/Release 2.7/Documentation/Technical/SCHEMA and DTDs/nrw-rime-extract.xsd
    /// </summary>
    internal class ExtractXmlReader_XmlSerializerImpl : ExtractXmlReader
    {
        private Log log = Log.getInstance();

        public rimeType read(string xmlFilename)
        {
            log.write(
                string.Format(
                    "DEBUG: ExtractXmlReader_XmlSerializerImpl.read({0})",
                    xmlFilename));
            using (Stream stream = new FileStream(xmlFilename, FileMode.Open))
            {
                return read(stream);
            }
        }

        internal rimeType read(Stream xmlInputStream)
        {
            // create an instance of the XmlSerializer class, 
            // specifying the type of object to be deserialized.
            XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(rimeType));
            serializer.UnknownNode += new XmlNodeEventHandler(handleUnknownNode);
            serializer.UnknownAttribute += 
                new XmlAttributeEventHandler(handleUnknownAttribute);
            // use the Deserialize method to restore the object's state
            // with data from the XML document.
            return (rimeType)serializer.Deserialize(xmlInputStream);
        }

        protected void handleUnknownNode(object sender, XmlNodeEventArgs e)
        {
            log.write(
                string.Format(
                    "XML_ERROR: Unknown Node at line {0} position {1} : {2}\t{3}",
                    e.LineNumber, e.LinePosition, e.Name, e.Text));
        }

        protected void handleUnknownAttribute(object sender, XmlAttributeEventArgs e)
        {
            log.write(
                string.Format(
                    "XML_ERROR: Unknown Attribute at line {0} position {1} : {2}='{3}'",
                    e.LineNumber, e.LinePosition, e.Attr.Name, e.Attr.Value));
        }

    }

    /// <summary>
    /// xtractXmlReader provides bindings to the extract.xml 
    /// returned by the RIME server; as defined by:
    ///   $/Release X/Documentation/Technical/SCHEMA and 
    /// DTDs/nrw-rime-extract.xsd
    /// </summary>
    internal class ExtractXmlReader_XmlTextReaderXmlSerializerHybridImpl :
        ExtractXmlReader
    {
        private Log log = Log.getInstance();

        public rimeType read(string xmlFilename)
        {
            log.write(
                string.Format(
                    "DEBUG: ExtractXmlReader_XmlTextReaderXmlSerializerHybridImpl." +
                    "read({0})",
                    xmlFilename));

            using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(xmlFilename))
            {
                return read(reader);
            }

        }

        public rimeType read(XmlReader reader)
        {
            rimeType result = new rimeType();
            // a deserializer for featureClass, feature, etc, "doclets"
            Dictionary<Type, XmlSerializer> serializers = 
                new Dictionary<Type, XmlSerializer>();
            serializers.Add(typeof(featureClassType), 
                newSerializer(typeof(featureClassType)));
            serializers.Add(typeof(featureType), 
                newSerializer(typeof(featureType)));

            List<featureClassType> featureClasses = new List<featureClassType>();
            List<featureType> features = new List<featureType>();
            while (!reader.EOF)
            {
                if (reader.MoveToContent() != XmlNodeType.Element)
                {
                    reader.Read(); // skip non-element-nodes and unknown-elements.
                    continue;
                }
                
                // skip junk nodes.
                if (reader.Name.Equals("featureClass"))
                {
                    using (
                        StringReader elementReader =
                            new StringReader(reader.ReadOuterXml()))
                    {
                        XmlSerializer deserializer =
                            serializers[typeof (featureClassType)];
                        featureClasses.Add(
                            (featureClassType)
                            deserializer.Deserialize(elementReader));
                    }
                    continue;
                    // ReadOuterXml advances the reader, so don't read again.
                }

                if (reader.Name.Equals("feature"))
                {
                    using (
                        StringReader elementReader =
                            new StringReader(reader.ReadOuterXml()))
                    {
                        XmlSerializer deserializer =
                            serializers[typeof (featureType)];
                        features.Add(
                            (featureType)
                            deserializer.Deserialize(elementReader));
                    }
                    continue;
                    // ReadOuterXml advances the reader, so don't read again.
                }

                log.write(
                    "WARNING: unknown element '" + reader.Name +
                    "' was skipped during parsing.");
                reader.Read(); // skip non-element-nodes and unknown-elements.
            }
            result.featureClasses = featureClasses.ToArray();
            result.features = features.ToArray();
            return result;
        }

        private XmlSerializer newSerializer(Type elementType)
        {
            XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(elementType);
            serializer.UnknownNode += new XmlNodeEventHandler(handleUnknownNode);
            serializer.UnknownAttribute += 
                new XmlAttributeEventHandler(handleUnknownAttribute);
            return serializer;
        }

        protected void handleUnknownNode(object sender, XmlNodeEventArgs e)
        {
            log.write(
                string.Format(
                    "XML_ERROR: Unknown Node at line {0} position {1} : {2}\t{3}",
                    e.LineNumber, e.LinePosition, e.Name, e.Text));
        }

        protected void handleUnknownAttribute(object sender, XmlAttributeEventArgs e)
        {
            log.write(
                string.Format(
                    "XML_ERROR: Unknown Attribute at line {0} position {1} : {2}='{3}'",
                    e.LineNumber, e.LinePosition, e.Attr.Name, e.Attr.Value));
        }
    }
}

Solution 3 - C#

Just to summarise, and make the answer a bit more obvious for anyone who finds this thread in google.

Prior to .NET 2 the XmlTextReader was the most memory efficient XML parser available in the standard API (thanx Mitch;-)

.NET 2 introduced the XmlReader class which is better again It's a forward-only element iterator (a bit like a StAX parser). (thanx Cerebrus;-)

And remember kiddies, of any XML instance has the potential to be bigger than about 500k, DON'T USE DOM!

Cheers all. Keith.

Solution 4 - C#

A SAX parser might be what you're looking for. SAX does not require you to read the entire document into memory - it parses through it incrementally and allows you to process the elements as you go. I don't know if there is a SAX parser provided in .NET, but there are a few opensource options that you could look at:

Here's a related post:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/127869/sax-vs-xmltextreader-sax-in-c

Solution 5 - C#

Just wanted to add this simple extension method as an example of using XmlReader (as Mitch answered):

public static bool SkipToElement (this XmlReader xmlReader, string elementName)
{
	if (!xmlReader.Read ())
		return false;

	while (!xmlReader.EOF)
	{
		if (xmlReader.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element && xmlReader.Name == elementName)
			return true;

		xmlReader.Skip ();
	}

	return false;
}

And usage:

using (var xml_reader = XmlReader.Create (this.source.Url))
{
	if (!SkipToElement (xml_reader, "Root"))
		throw new InvalidOperationException ("XML element \"Root\" was not found.");

	if (!SkipToElement (xml_reader, "Users"))
		throw new InvalidOperationException ("XML element \"Root/Users\" was not found.");
	
	...
}

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	corlettk	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - C#	Mitch Wheat	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - C#	corlettk	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - C#	corlettk	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - C#	Andy White	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - C#	Michael Logutov	View Answer on Stackoverflow