So you want to compare two XML strings together to see if they are equal. Obviously, it would be easy to just compare the two strings using a regular string equality comparison and call it a day. However, what if the XML strings looked like the following:
<SampleXML> <SampleField1>Testing</SampleField1> <SampleField2 value="test value" /> <SampleField3 type="int">456</SampleField3> </SampleXML><SampleXML> <SampleField1>Testing</SampleField1> <SampleField2 value="test value" /> <SampleField3 type="int">456</SampleField3></SampleXML>
All of the nodes, attributes and values are the same, but the formatting is way off. Obviously, a string equality comparison between these two would return false. Is there anything that can be done about this? Not to fear, .NET provides a pretty simple solution.
XmlDocument xmlDoc1 = new XmlDocument(); xmlDoc1.LoadXml(xmlString1); XmlDocument xmlDoc2 = new XmlDocument(); xmlDoc2.LoadXml(xmlString2); bool areXmlStringsEqual = xmlDoc1.OuterXml == xmlDoc2.OuterXml;
This method cleans up the XML strings and makes them in the same format. It’s a pretty simple solution that should find XML strings to be equal in most cases. For other cases, digging into the XmlDocument’s child node properties may be necessary, but that is a blog post for another day.
Richard Franzen
Developer
ImageSource, Inc.