It is a common scenario when we need to bind or display data from XML File to Silverlight Data Grid. In this article, I have tried to demonstrate this with simple steps. What all we are going to do is

1. Download content of XML file as string using WebClient class.

2. Parse XML file using LINQ to XML

3. Bind parsed result as item source of Data Grid.

Prepare Data Source

Put your XML File in ClientBin folder. You can put XML file at any server location but in that case you will have to provide absolute URI of the XML file while downloading or reading XML file.

I have created a sample Data.xml file

Data.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<School>
 <Student RollNumber="1" Name="John Papa" />
 <Student RollNumber="2" Name="Scott Gui" />
 <Student RollNumber="3" Name="Jessy Liberty" />
 <Student RollNumber="4" Name="Tim Huer" />
 <Student RollNumber="5" Name="Victor G" />
 <Student RollNumber="6" Name="Mahesh Chand" />
 <Student RollNumber="7" Name="Pinal Dave" />
 <Student RollNumber="8" Name="Suprotim Agarwal" />
 <Student RollNumber="9" Name="Dhananjay Kumar" />
 <Student RollNumber="10" Name="Kunal Chawudhary" />
 <Student RollNumber="11" Name="Abhijit Jana" />
 <Student RollNumber="12" Name="Shiv Prasad Koirala" />
</School>

Design xaml page

I am going to create a simple page. This page is going to have a Button and a Data Grid. On click event of the Button, Data from XML file will get bind to Data Grid.

MainPage.xaml

<UserControl xmlns:sdk= http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation/sdk
 x:Class="SilverlightApplication5.MainPage"
 xmlns=http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation
 xmlns:x=http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml
 xmlns:d=http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008
 xmlns:mc=http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006
 mc:Ignorable="d"
 d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400">
 <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
 <StackPanel Orientation="Vertical" Margin="50,50,50,50">
 <Button x:Name="btnDemo" Content="Click To get Data From  XML File" Height="62" Width="362" />
 <sdk:DataGrid x:Name="grdXmlData" Height="Auto" Width="Auto" AutoGenerateColumns="True" />
 </StackPanel>
 </Grid>
</UserControl>

Down Load Data from XML File

I am using WebClient class to download content of XML file as string. On button click event downloading content of XML file.

Do not forget to include namespace System.Net to work with WebClient class.

Parse XML Data and bind to Data Grid

We are going to use LINQ to XML to parse data. Include Namespace System.Xml.Linq . To parse data from xml file , we have written below function .

Explanation

1. Function is taking string as input parameter. Here we will pass e.Result from Downloadcompletedstring event.

2. Creating an instance of XDocument by parsing string

3. Reading each descendants or element on Xml file and assigning value of each attribute to properties of Entity class (Student).

We need to create an Entity class to map the data from XML File. I am going to create a class Student with properties exactly as the same of attributes of Student Element in XML file.

Student .cs

namespace SilverlightApplication5
{
 public class Student
 {

public string RollNumber { get; set; }
 public string Name { get; set; }

}
}

For reference full source code is as below,

MainPage.xaml.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Xml.Linq;

namespace SilverlightApplication5
{
 public partial class MainPage : UserControl
 {
 List<Student> lstStudents = null;
 public MainPage()
 {
 InitializeComponent();
 btnDemo.Click += new RoutedEventHandler(btnDemo_Click);
 }

private void btnDemo_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
 {
 WebClient client = new WebClient();
 Uri uritoXML = new Uri("Data.xml", UriKind.Relative);
 client.DownloadStringCompleted += new DownloadStringCompletedEventHandler(client_DownloadStringCompleted);
 client.DownloadStringAsync(uritoXML);

}

void client_DownloadStringCompleted(object sender, DownloadStringCompletedEventArgs e)
 {

if (e.Error != null)
 {
 MessageBox.Show("There is Error Downloading Data from XML File ");
 }
 else
 {

ParseXMLFile(e.Result);
 }
 }

void ParseXMLFile(string  dataInXmlFile)
 {

lstStudents = new List<Student>();

XDocument xmlDoc = XDocument.Parse(dataInXmlFile);
 lstStudents  = (from r in xmlDoc.Descendants("Student")
 select new Student
 {
 Name = (string) r.Attribute("Name").Value,
 RollNumber =(string) r.Attribute("RollNumber").Value
 }).ToList();

grdXmlData.ItemsSource = lstStudents;
 }

}
}

On running we will get output as below,

WebClient class is used in Silverlight to asynchronously download or read a file from a particular URI.

1. WebClient class is under System.Net namespace.

2. This can retrieve data from any format of service. This can retrieve data in JSON, POX, and REST etc. format.

3. WebClient makes the entire request asynchronously. So it does not block any other operation.

4. On basis of data type of response from URI, we can choose class to parse the response data. If response is JOSN, we can use DataContractJSONSerliazer to parse response data.

5. Any type of file including Media, Images, and XML etc. can be downloaded using WebClient class.

Let us read a XML file asynchronously using WebClient class.

1. Add XML file named Data.xml in the client bin folder. Right click on client Bin folder and add a new item then select XML file from Data tab. Give name of the file as Data.xml.

Data.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<School>
 <Student>
 <RollNumber>1</RollNumber>
 <Name>John Papa</Name>
 </Student>
 <Student>
 <RollNumber>1</RollNumber>
 <Name>John Papa</Name>
 </Student>
 <Student>
 <RollNumber>2</RollNumber>
 <Name>Scott Gui</Name>
 </Student>
 <Student>
 <RollNumber>3</RollNumber>
 <Name>Jessy Liberty</Name>
 </Student>
 <Student>
 <RollNumber>4</RollNumber>
 <Name>Tim Huer</Name>
 </Student>
 <Student>
 <RollNumber>5</RollNumber>
 <Name>Victor Gud</Name>
 </Student>
 <Student>
 <RollNumber>6</RollNumber>
 <Name>Machesh Chand</Name>
 </Student>
 <Student>
 <RollNumber>7</RollNumber>
 <Name>Pinal Dave</Name>
 </Student>
 <Student>
 <RollNumber>8</RollNumber>
 <Name>Suprotim Agarwal</Name>
 </Student>
 <Student>
 <RollNumber>9</RollNumber>
 <Name>Dhananjay Kumar</Name>
 </Student>
 <Student>
 <RollNumber>10</RollNumber>
 <Name>Kunal Chawudhary</Name>
 </Student>
 <Student>
 <RollNumber>11</RollNumber>
 <Name>Abhijit Jana</Name>
 </Student>
 <Student>
 <RollNumber>12</RollNumber>
 <Name>Shiv Prasad Koirala</Name>
 </Student>
</School>

2. Once Data.xml file is in place inside client bin folder, let us design XAML page. We will put one Button and one TextBlock.

On click event of button, we will make asynchronous call to read Data.xml file. After successful reading, we will bind xml response to TextBlock.

MainPage.xaml

<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
 <StackPanel Orientation="Vertical" Margin="50,50,50,50">
 <Button x:Name="btnDemo" Content="Click To get Data From  XML using WebClient" Height="62" Width="362" />
 <ScrollViewer VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" Height="200" Width="300">
 <TextBlock x:Name="txtDataFromXml"  Width="Auto" Height="Auto" />
 </ScrollViewer>
 </StackPanel>
 </Grid>
</UserControl>

3. On click event of button, we will read Data.xml file asynchronously.

At time of creation of URL either we can provide absolute URI or relative. In our example Data.xml file is in client bin folder so we are providing relative address.

In OpenReadCompleted event handler, we will parse XML file and bind response to TextBlock.

For reference full code is given below,

MainPage.xaml.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Animation;
using System.Windows.Shapes;
using System.IO;

namespace SilverlightApplication5
{
 public partial class MainPage : UserControl
 {
 public MainPage()
 {
 InitializeComponent();
 btnDemo.Click +=new RoutedEventHandler(btnDemo_Click);
 }

private void btnDemo_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
 {
 WebClient client = new WebClient();
 Uri uritoXML = new Uri("Data.xml",UriKind.Relative);
 client.OpenReadCompleted += new OpenReadCompletedEventHandler(client_OpenReadCompleted);
 client.OpenReadAsync(uritoXML);

}

void client_OpenReadCompleted(object sender, OpenReadCompletedEventArgs e)
 {

Stream s = e.Result;
 StreamReader strReader = new StreamReader(s);
 txtDataFromXml.Text = strReader.ReadToEnd();
 s.Close();
 }
 }
}

Output