Performance concerns when loading and parsing XML?

In C#, when loading an XML document via

XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();

xmlDoc.Load("test.xml");

Do I need to put in some waiting procedure before I can parse the XML nodes, to make sure the file has fully loaded?

And are there any performance concerns parsing the XmlDocument as is, or should I be converting it to a C# class?

So far both the loading and the parsing seem to be working fine with smaller XML files, but what if they become huge?

 

You don't have to wait, that's automatic. If the file is too large, the entire process will hang until it's been read.

If it gets that large, you can use async versions of the methods to load off the main thread. You can google "C# async load xml" to get a million results.

 

As Baste points out, there may be issues.

However, if you're just starting out and there is no reason to use XML, don't use XML. It is March 2021, please consider using something like JSON instead.

"So you have a problem and you decide to use XML. Now you have two problems."

Or heck, in Unity, put your data into ScriptableObjects... instantly editable, etc. Glorious for tightly-shaped predefined data that you can load in as small a chunk as you like, or all at once.

 

Thanks for the responses I'll look into ScriptableObjects. The reason I'm leaning towards XML at this point is simply because it's more readable and editable for me, compared to JSON. But if it's generally something that causes problems, I may rethink.

 

If you have a lot of extra custom data that needs to be deserialized runtime with zero-to-minimum penalty then you better off with MessagePack. Both JSON and XML are slow and have overhead and allocations.

 

In what absurd world is

<data>data</data>

more readable than

data

??????????