Conversion of XML Data Types 

The majority of the methods found in an XmlConvert class are used to convert data between strings and strongly-typed formats. Methods are locale independent. This means that they do not take into account any locale settings when doing conversion.

Reading String as types

The following sample reads a string and converts it to a DateTime type.

Given the following XML input:

Input

<Element>2001-02-27T11:13:23</Element>

This code converts the string to the DateTime format:

reader.ReadStartElement()
Dim vDateTime As DateTime = XmlConvert.ToDateTime(reader.ReadString())
Console.WriteLine(vDateTime)
reader.ReadStartElement();
DateTime vDateTime = XmlConvert.ToDateTime(reader.ReadString());
Console.WriteLine(vDateTime);

Writing Strings as types

The following sample reads an Int32 and converts it to a string.

Given the following XML input:

Input

<TestInt32>-2147483648</TestInt32>

This code converts the Int32 into a String:

Dim vInt32 As Int32 = -2147483648
writer.WriteElementString("TestInt32", XmlConvert.ToString(vInt32))
Int32 vInt32=-2147483648;
writer.WriteElementString("TestInt32",XmlConvert.ToString(vInt32));

See Also

Concepts

Converting Strings to .NET Framework Data Types
Converting .NET Framework Types to Strings