In another of my series of Tribal Knowledge articles, this one discusses the basics of loading an XDocument and creating a different document from that original.

There may be a need for one to remove the document type from the original XDocument in C#, or do a basic copy and this is presented here.

How-To

Here is the Xml in a classic before:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<!-- Generator: AVG Magician 1.0.0, AVG Exports Plug-In . AVG Version: 2.00 Build 8675309)  -->
<!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC '-//W3C//DTD AVG 1.1//EN' 'http://www.w3.org/Graphics/AVG/1.1/DTD/avg11.dtd'[]>
<avg version='1.1' id='Layer_1' x='0px' y='0px' xml:space='preserve'>
    <rect x='100.143' y='103.714' fill='none' width='87.857' height='12.143' />
</avg>

and this is what we want to achieve:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<avg version="1.1" id="Layer_1" x="0px" y="0px" xml:space="preserve">
    <rect x="100.143" y="103.714" fill="none" width="87.857" height="12.143" />
</avg>

Since we only care about the AVG node, its the main root, we will simply get that node and append it to our new clone. Here is the full code:

string xml = @"<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<!-- Generator: AVG Magician 1.0.0, AVG Export Plug-In . AVG Version: 2.00 Build 8675309)  -->
<!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC '-//W3C//DTD AVG 1.1//EN' 'http://www.w3.org/Graphics/AVG/1.1/DTD/avg11.dtd'[]>
<avg version='1.1' id='Layer_1' x='0px' y='0px' xml:space='preserve'>
    <rect x='100.143' y='103.714' fill='none' width='87.857' height='12.143' />
</avg>";

XDocument loaded = XDocument.Parse( xml, LoadOptions.SetLineInfo );

XDocument clone = new XDocument( new XDeclaration( "1.0", "utf-8", "yes"),
    loaded.LastNode
    );

Console.WriteLine( clone );

The above achieves the after Xml which we seek, no DocType, we didn’t add it and no first node which is the comment line. I hope this little example helps.