XML Document Literal
A literal representing an XDocument object.
<?xml version="1.0" [encoding="encoding"] [standalone="standalone"] ?>
[ piCommentList ]
rootElement
[ piCommentList ]
Parts
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 piCommentcan be one of the following:
rootElement
Required. Root element of the document. The format is one of the following: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)
See Also
Concepts
Reference
XML Processing Instruction Literal