how to: DataSet -> XML using tablename as root element

[nautiboy]

This seems like it should be so trivial, but try as I might I can't figure it out.

I want to write out a dataset as xml (i.e., DataSet.WriteXml()) but use the tablename as the root element instead of the datasetname. For example, if I have:

private void simpleDataSetXml()
{
DataSet ds = new DataSet();
DataTable table = new DataTable("foo");
DataColumn col = new DataColumn("bar", System.Type.GetType("System.String"));
table.Columns.Add(col);

DataRow row = table.NewRow();
row["bar"] = "baz";

table.Rows.Add(row);
ds.Tables.Add(table);

StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
ds.WriteXml(writer);
System.Console.WriteLine(writer.ToString());
}

What I'd like to see is:

<foo>
<bar>baz</bar>
</foo>

Instead of:

<NewDataSet>
<foo>
<bar>baz</bar>
</foo>
</NewDataSet>

I know that it's somehow possible because if I do a DataSet.ReadXml() of the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<foo>
<bar>baz</bar>
</foo>

And then do a DataSet.WriteXml() then it gives me exactly what I want. When I compare the dataset structures in the debugger the only difference I see between my programmatically-generated dataset and the one created from the XML is that the dataset created from XML has:

fTopLevelTable = true

Whereas the programmatically generated one has fTopLevelTable = false.

Now fTopLevelTable is a private variable so I can't just modify it, but I can't for the life of me figure out what property to set or method to call to get it to be true.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-Dave

[rajus4scripts]

try this
DataSet ds = new DataSet("foo");

[nautiboy]

try this
DataSet ds = new DataSet("foo");

That will give me

<foo>
<foo>
<bar>baz</bar>
</foo>
</foo>

[rajus4scripts]

obviously some thing will come in the place of <NewDataSet>

[nautiboy]

obviously some thing will come in the place of <NewDataSet>

No, not obviously. And that's exactly what I want (nothing to replace NewDataSet). I want the table to be the root element, not the dataset. This is what happens if you read in xml using DataSet.ReadXml(). As mentioned earlier, if you do a ReadXml() on:

<foo>
<bar>baz</bar>
</foo>

It will create a dataset with a datasetname of NewDataSet and a table named foo. If you do a DataSet.WriteXml() on that same dataset it will generate:

<foo>
<bar>baz</bar>
</foo>

Not

<NewDataSet>
<foo>
<bar>baz</bar>
</foo>
</NewDataSet>

This is exactly what I want. What I want to figure out is how to create programmatically what the internals of ReadXml() seem to be doing. And as I said, if you look at the 2 datasets in the debugger (i.e., the one created doing a ReadXml() and the one using the code I wrote above) the only difference between the 2 is that the one created by ReadXml() has fTopLevelTable = true. Everything else is identical, including the datasetname = NewDataSet, so I'm guessing it's that flag that's causing the difference, but I don't know what I need to do to cause that flag to be set true.