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>

Answer 1

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);
}

• Charlieface: Probably more efficient to serialize via StreamWriter to a MemoryStream, then move Position back to 0 and pass it as StreamContent.
• Dale K: A good answer includes a written explanation.