How to determine if XML is well formed?

I've got a large xml document in a string. What's the best way to determine if the xml is well formed?

From stackoverflow

• Simply run it through a parser. That will perform the appropriate checks (whether it parses ok).

  If it's a large document (as indicated) then an event-based parser (e.g. SAX) will be appropriate since it won't store the document in memory.

  It's often useful to have XML utilities around to check this sort of stuff. I use XMLStarlet, which is a command-line set of tools for XML checking/manipulation.

• XmlReader seems a good choice as it should stream the data (not load the whole xml in one go)

  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/9d83k261.aspx

• Have a look at how-to-deal-with-xml-in-c, which might help you.

• Try using an XmlReader with an XmlReaderSettings that has ConformanceLevel.Document set.

• Something like:

      static void Main() {
          Test("<abc><def/></abc>");
          Test("<abc><def/><abc>");
      }
      static void Test(string xml) {
          using (XmlReader xr = XmlReader.Create(
                  new StringReader(xml))) {
              try {
                  while (xr.Read()) { }
                  Console.WriteLine("Pass");
              } catch (Exception ex) {
                  Console.WriteLine("Fail: " + ex.Message);
              }
          }
      }
  

  If you need to check against an xsd, then use XmlReaderSettings.

• Save it to an .xml file and open it in Internet Explorer :)

• check this out