Rename an element using XPathNavigator

Question

I have an XPathNavigator object pointing to an XML element. I want to rename the element to another name (and also rename the associated end element). Can this be done using the XPathNavigator?

(I have a work-around, which is to Delete the element and re-insert it under a different name, but this may cause a performance issue, because I am handling very large documents)

Answer 1

It depends on what your underlying XML document representation is. If you are using XDocument you can do:

(XElement)(navigator.UnderlyingObject).Name = ...

I don't think it is possible with XmlDocument (except as you suggest), or XPathDocument.

Answer 2

For anyone else interested in this question, and if I understand the question correctly, and you want to rename an element node, then I see that it's very easily doable from XPathNavigator using ReplaceSelf. I'm using .Net framework version 4.0, but this looks like it's been around for a while.

(quick C# example)

    XmlDocument reportServerDocument = new XmlDocument();
    reportServerDocument.Load("C:\Path\to\ReportServer\rsreportserver.config");

    XPathNavigator reportServerDocumentNavigator = 
        reportServerDocument.CreateNavigator();

    XPathNavigator authenticationTypesNode = 
        reportServerDocumentNavigator.SelectSingleNode(
            "//Authentication/AuthenticationTypes/RSWindowsNegotiate");

    authenticationTypesNode.ReplaceSelf("<Custom/>");

    reportServerDocument.Save("C:\Path\to\ReportServer\rsreportserver.config");
    log.Info("Updated the AuthenticationTypes: " + 
       authenticationTypesNode.OuterXml);