ASP.NET Core MVC: How to make simple page with IEnumerable<XML>

Question

I have a simple project where the start page shows a list of books. How to make the same page, but with display as XML?

Controller method:

public IActionResult Index()
{
    // stored procedure
    var books = _context.Bookstable.FromSqlRaw("SelectAll").ToList();
    return View(books); 
}

View

@model IEnumerable<MyProject.Models.Book>;

@{
    ViewData["Title"] = "Home Page";
    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml";
}

<link href="@Url.Content("~/css/style.css")" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

<div>
    <Table>
        <tr>
            <th><h5>Author</h5></th>
            <th><h5>Name</h5></th>
        </tr>
        @foreach (var item in Model)
        {
            <tr>
                <td>@item.Author</td>
                <td>
                   <a href="@Url.Action("BookPage", "Home", new {id = @item.Id })">@item.Name</a>
                </td>
            </tr>
        }
    </Table>
    <br/><br/><br/>
</div>

I need to return serialized data from the controller as XML, the Razor view accepts data and displays it.

There are many questions on this topic, but I did not find an answer to mine.

It should be something like this controller method:

public IActionResult IndexXML()
{
    var books = _context.Bookstable.FromSqlRaw("SelectAll").ToList();
    // how to convert 'books' to XML?
    booksXML = 
    return View(booksXML, "text/xml"); 
}

Should I create a new table (in SQL Server) with a different (XML) data type?

Do I need to rewrite the stored procedures (it would be nice to keep the old ones, but convert the data after retrieving it)?

I'm probably missing something else.

View

@* @model IEnumerable<MyProject.Models.Book>;   need XMLstring   *@

{ *@
    Context.Response.ContentType = "text/xml"; 
} *@

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> 

{
    ViewData["Title"] = "Home Page";
    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml";
}

<link href="@Url.Content("~/css/style.css")" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

<div>
    <h3>XML</h3>
    <br/><br/>
    <Table>
        <tr>
            <th><h5>Author</h5></th>
            <th><h5>Name</h5></th>
        </tr>
        @foreach (@* ???????  *@)
        {
            <tr>
                @* ???????  *@
            </tr>
        }
    </Table>
    <br /><br /><br />
</div>

Dale K · Accepted Answer · 2025-10-27 05:46:39Z

3

Use this one:

using System.Xml.Serialization;
using System.IO;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore;
using System.Text;

public IActionResult Index()
{
    var books = _context.Bookstable
        .FromSqlRaw("EXEC SelectAll")
        .ToList();

    // Convert to XML
    var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<Bookstable>));
    using var stringWriter = new StringWriter();
    serializer.Serialize(stringWriter, books);
    string xml = stringWriter.ToString();

    // Return XML as content
    return Content(xml, "application/xml", Encoding.UTF8);
}

edited Oct 27 at 5:46

Dale K

28.1k15 gold badges59 silver badges85 bronze badges

answered Jul 31 at 9:38

Vanraj Chudasama

461 bronze badge

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2 Comments

Charlieface Jul 31 at 13:01

Probably more efficient to serialize via StreamWriter to a MemoryStream, then move Position back to 0 and pass it as StreamContent.

Dale K Oct 27 at 5:46

A good answer includes a written explanation.

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