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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:

    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

Embedded Expressions in XML

Reference

XML Processing Instruction Literal

XML Comment Literal

XML Element Literal

XElement

XProcessingInstruction

XComment

XDocument

Other Resources

XML Literals

Creating XML in Visual Basic