How do I convert an XmlNodeList into a NodeSet to use within XSLT?

Question

I've got a XmlNodeList which I need to have it in a format that I can then re-use within a XSLT stylesheet by calling it from a C# extension method.

Can anyone help? I have read that it might have something to do with using a XPathNavigator but I'm still a bit stuck.

Answer 1

I had to solve this issue myself a couple of years ago. The only way I managed it was to create an XML fragment containing the nodes in the node list and then passing in the children of the fragment.

XsltArgumentList arguments = new XsltArgumentList();
XmlNodeList nodelist;
XmlDocument nodesFrament = new XmlDocument();
XmlNode root = nodesFragment.CreateElement("root");
foreach (XmlNode node in nodeList)
{
    root.AppendChild(node);
}
nodesFragment.AppendChild(root);

arguments.AddParam("argumentname", string.Empty, nodesFragment.CreateNavigator().SelectChildren(XPathNodeType.All));

Then you need to make sure you have the corresponding argument in your XSLT, of course.

Note that you probably don't need the additional XmlDocument. You could just call CreateNavigator() on the root XmlNode instance and use your existing XmlDocument for creating the element (I wrote this code some time ago and I've learned more since then - but I know the code above works, I haven't tried any alternatives).

Answer 2

The note at the end was the most useful, I had infact transformed the XmlNodeList into a XmlDocument already so could just use the Navigator on there and create it as a XPathNodeIterator.

Thanks for you help!

Answer 3

Didn't succeed with the answer provided before.

Using AppendChild() to add previously selected nodes of XmlNodeList to a new document resulted in exception on trying to append nodes originating from a different document context. Several trials to fix this included adding my custom default namespace selected nodes in list are bound to. Finally I dropped the approach completely and switched the way I select nodes into XmlNodeList instances.

Instead of

myXmlNode.SelectNodes( xpath, nsmgr )

I'm using

myXmlNode.CreateNavigator().Select( xpath, nsmgr )

to get an XPathNodeIterator instead of XmlNodeList. The resulting XPathNodeIterator of second code is now properly added as parameter value to XsltArgumentsList.