XML Document Literal (Visual Basic)

Article
09/15/2021

A literal representing an XDocument object.

Syntax

<?xml version="1.0" [encoding="encoding"] [standalone="standalone"] ?>  
[ piCommentList ]  
rootElement  
[ piCommentList ]

Parts

Term	Definition
`encoding`	Optional. Literal text declaring which encoding the document uses.
`standalone`	Optional. Literal text. Must be "yes" or "no".
`piCommentList`	Optional. List of XML processing instructions and XML comments. Takes the following format: `piComment [` `piComment` `... ]` Each `piComment` can be one of the following: - XML Processing Instruction Literal. - XML Comment Literal.
`rootElement`	Required. Root element of the document. The format is one of the following: XML Element Literal. Embedded expression of the form `<%=` `elementExp` `%>`. The `elementExp` returns one of the following: An XElement object. A collection that contains one XElement object and any number of XProcessingInstruction and XComment objects. For more information, see Embedded Expressions in XML.

Return Value

An XDocument object.

Remarks

An XML document literal is identified by the XML declaration at the start of the literal. Although each XML document literal must have exactly one root XML element, it can have any number of XML processing instructions and XML comments.

An XML document literal cannot appear in an XML element.

Note

An XML literal can span multiple lines without using line continuation characters. This enables you to copy content from an XML document and paste it directly into a Visual Basic program.

The Visual Basic compiler converts the XML document literal into calls to the XDocument and XDeclaration constructors.

Example

The following example creates an XML document that has an XML declaration, a processing instruction, a comment, and an element that contains another element.

Dim libraryRequest As XDocument = 
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
    <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="show_book.xsl"?>
    <!-- Tests that the application works. -->
    <books>
        <book/>
    </books>
Console.WriteLine(libraryRequest)

Share via