Loading an XML File into Silverlight - Page 1
       by kirupa  |  27 April 2008

One of the most common things you can do to make your application more dynamic is load content from an external source. The most common of which is an XML file or a XML-based file such as those from various RSS feeds.

There are two major topics when it comes to using XML in Silverlight. One topic is how to load data from a separate XML file. Another topic is how to actually read the contents of our XML file using LINQ. This tutorial will primarily focus on the former where we discuss how to load your XML data into your Silverlight application.

The XML file you load will look like the following:

You can view this XML file by clicking on the following link.

Setting up the Project
Before we can start to actually load the XML data, let's get your project set up appropriately. If this is your first time creating Silverlight 2 content on your computer, be sure to read my Getting Started with Silverlight 2 article that explains everything you need to get up and running.

Ok, let's get started:

1. First, launch Visual Studio 2008 and create a new Silverlight 2 application. After entering your name and location, you will be prompted with a dialog asking if you want to create a Web site for hosting your app:

[ create a new VS2008 Silverlight 2 project ]

2. From this dialog, go with the default choices which should be "Add a new Web to the solution for hosting the control". Click on the OK button to close this dialog and to create both your Silverlight application and your Web site:

[ your solution will contain both a Web Site as well as a Silverlight 2 project ]

To learn more about this separation between your web site and Silverlight application, the following article should help you out.

3. Ok, great, your project has now been created. What you need is an XML file to load. Download the Sample XML file to your computer by right clicking on the link and choosing the equivalent of Save Target As:

[ save your sampleXML.xml file to your computer ]

4. Once you have the sampleXML file downloaded to your computer, you need to add it to your Web site project. More specifically, you want to add it in your ClientBin folder. There are several ways you can do that.
   
   The easiest way would be to drag and drop this XML file into your ClientBin folder. An alternative would be to right click on your ClientBin folder and choosing to Add Existing Item:

[ drag the XML file into ClientBin or Add Existing Item ]

A file picker will appear, and from this window you can browse to where your XML file was and have it be added to your solution. In the end, regardless of which approach you took, you should see your XML file inside your ClientBin directory:

[ in the end, your sampleXML file will be added to your ClientBin folder ]

Ok, now that you have your project setup and your XML file ready, all that remains is adding the code and figuring out why the code works the way it does.

Onwards to the next page!

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