How to bind XML File or XML DataSource to a DataList Control in Asp.Net

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DataList control is an important control in Asp.Net applications. Most of the times we need to bind DataList control from a Database using Ado.Net datasource. But sometimes we need to bind XML file as Datasource into a DataList control. Here in this article i will demonstrate how one can bind XML data into a DataList control using the datasource XmlDataSource. The output will be:

To do the above example we need to write an XML file like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Customers>
  <Customer>
    <Name>Shawpnendu Bikash Maloroy</Name>
    <Address>Uttara, Dhaka</Address>
    <City>Dhaka</City>
    <Phone>011789657</Phone>
  </Customer>
  <Customer>
    <Name>Bimolandu Bikash Maloroy</Name>
    <Address>Sonaimuri, Noakhali</Address>
    <City>Noakhali</City>
    <Phone>019789687</Phone>
  </Customer>
  <Customer>
    <Name>Purnendu Bikash Maloroy</Name>
    <Address>FirmGate, Dhaka</Address>
    <City>Dhaka</City>
    <Phone>018788767</Phone>
  </Customer>
  <Customer>
    <Name>Shadesh Chandra Chanda</Name>
    <Address>Maijdee, Noakhali</Address>
    <City>Noakhali</City>
    <Phone>015787597</Phone>
  </Customer>
  <Customer>
    <Name>Sajal Chandra Chanda</Name>
    <Address>Maijdee, Noakhali</Address>
    <City>Noakhali</City>
    <Phone>019734557</Phone>
  </Customer>
</Customers>

Now add an aspx page into your project & modify the HTML markup like below:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="DataList_XML.aspx.cs" Inherits="DataList_XML" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head runat="server">
    <title>An Example of Binding XML Datasource into DataList Control</title>
</head>
<body>
    <form id="form1" runat="server">
    <div>
    
    <asp:DataList ID="DataList1" runat="server" DataSourceID="XmlDataSource1"> 
        <HeaderTemplate>Customer Name</HeaderTemplate>
        <ItemStyle BackColor="Gray" ForeColor="Yellow" />
        <AlternatingItemStyle BackColor="Silver" />
        <ItemTemplate>
            <%# XPath("Name")%>
        </ItemTemplate>
    </asp:DataList>
    
    <asp:XmlDataSource ID="XmlDataSource1" runat="server" 
        DataFile="Customers.xml" 
        XPath="//Customers/Customer">
    </asp:XmlDataSource>
    
    </div>
    </form>
</body>
</html>

Now run the page. Hope you will get your desired output.