C# – The most performant way to validate XML against XSD

cnetxmlxml-validationxsd

I get a string variable with XML in it and have a XSD file. I have to validate the XML in the string against the XSD file and know there is more than one way (XmlDocument, XmlReader, … ?).

After the validation I just have to store the XML, so I don't need it in an XDocument or XmlDocument.

What's the way to go if I want the fastest performance?

Best Answer

Others have already mentioned the XmlReader class for doing the validation, and I wont elaborate further into that.

Your question does not specify much context. Will you be doing this validation repeatedly for several xml documents, or just once? I'm reading a scenario where you are just validating a lot of xml documents (from a third party system?) and storing them for future use.

My contribution to the performance hunt would be to use a compiled XmlSchemaSet which would be thread safe, so several threads can reuse it without needing to parse the xsd document again.

var xmlSchema = XmlSchema.Read(stream, null);
var xmlSchemaSet = new XmlSchemaSet();
xmlSchemaSet.Add(xmlSchema);
xmlSchemaSet.Compile();

CachedSchemas.Add(name, xmlSchemaSet);

Related Solutions

C# – Case insensitive ‘Contains(string)’

You could use the String.IndexOf Method and pass StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase as the type of search to use:

string title = "STRING";
bool contains = title.IndexOf("string", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) >= 0;

Even better is defining a new extension method for string:

public static class StringExtensions
{
    public static bool Contains(this string source, string toCheck, StringComparison comp)
    {
        return source?.IndexOf(toCheck, comp) >= 0;
    }
}

Note, that null propagation ?. is available since C# 6.0 (VS 2015), for older versions use

if (source == null) return false;
return source.IndexOf(toCheck, comp) >= 0;

USAGE:

string title = "STRING";
bool contains = title.Contains("string", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase);

C# – Validating an XML against referenced XSD in C#

You need to create an XmlReaderSettings instance and pass that to your XmlReader when you create it. Then you can subscribe to the ValidationEventHandler in the settings to receive validation errors. Your code will end up looking like this:

using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Schema;
using System.IO;

public class ValidXSD
{
    public static void Main()
    {

        // Set the validation settings.
        XmlReaderSettings settings = new XmlReaderSettings();
        settings.ValidationType = ValidationType.Schema;
        settings.ValidationFlags |= XmlSchemaValidationFlags.ProcessInlineSchema;
        settings.ValidationFlags |= XmlSchemaValidationFlags.ProcessSchemaLocation;
        settings.ValidationFlags |= XmlSchemaValidationFlags.ReportValidationWarnings;
        settings.ValidationEventHandler += new ValidationEventHandler(ValidationCallBack);

        // Create the XmlReader object.
        XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create("inlineSchema.xml", settings);

        // Parse the file. 
        while (reader.Read()) ;

    }
    // Display any warnings or errors.
    private static void ValidationCallBack(object sender, ValidationEventArgs args)
    {
        if (args.Severity == XmlSeverityType.Warning)
            Console.WriteLine("\tWarning: Matching schema not found.  No validation occurred." + args.Message);
        else
            Console.WriteLine("\tValidation error: " + args.Message);

    }
}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – Case insensitive ‘Contains(string)’

C# – Validating an XML against referenced XSD in C#

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