Case insensitive XML parser in c#

An XMl document can have two different elements named respectively: MyName and myName -- that are intended to be different. Converting/treating them as the same name is an error that can have gross consequences.

In case the above is not the case, then here is a more precise solution, using XSLT to process the document into one that only has lowercase element names and lowercase attribute names:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>
 <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

 <xsl:variable name="vUpper" select=
 "'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'"/>

 <xsl:variable name="vLower" select=
 "'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'"/>

 <xsl:template match="node()|@*">
     <xsl:copy>
       <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/>
     </xsl:copy>
 </xsl:template>

 <xsl:template match="*[name()=local-name()]" priority="2">
  <xsl:element name="{translate(name(), $vUpper, $vLower)}"
   namespace="{namespace-uri()}">
       <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/>
  </xsl:element>
 </xsl:template>

 <xsl:template match="*" priority="1">
  <xsl:element name=
   "{substring-before(name(), ':')}:{translate(local-name(), $vUpper, $vLower)}"
   namespace="{namespace-uri()}">
       <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/>
  </xsl:element>
 </xsl:template>

 <xsl:template match="@*[name()=local-name()]" priority="2">
  <xsl:attribute name="{translate(name(), $vUpper, $vLower)}"
   namespace="{namespace-uri()}">
       <xsl:value-of select="."/>
  </xsl:attribute>
 </xsl:template>

 <xsl:template match="@*" priority="1">
  <xsl:attribute name=
   "{substring-before(name(), ':')}:{translate(local-name(), $vUpper, $vLower)}"
   namespace="{namespace-uri()}">
     <xsl:value-of select="."/>
  </xsl:attribute>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

when this transformation is applied on any XML document, for example this one:

<authors xmlns:user="myNamespace">
  <?ttt This is a PI ?>
  <Author xmlns:user2="myNamespace2">
    <Name idd="VH">Victor Hugo</Name>
    <user2:Name idd="VH">Victor Hugo</user2:Name>
    <Nationality xmlns:user3="myNamespace3">French</Nationality>
  </Author>
  <!-- This is a very long comment the purpose is
       to test the default stylesheet for long comments-->
  <Author Period="classical">
    <Name>Sophocles</Name>
    <Nationality>Greek</Nationality>
  </Author>
  <author>
    <Name>Leo Tolstoy</Name>
    <Nationality>Russian</Nationality>
  </author>
  <Author>
    <Name>Alexander Pushkin</Name>
    <Nationality>Russian</Nationality>
  </Author>
  <Author Period="classical">
    <Name>Plato</Name>
    <Nationality>Greek</Nationality>
  </Author>
</authors>

the wanted, correct result (element and attribute names converted to lowercase) is produced:

<authors><?ttt This is a PI ?>
   <author>
      <name idd="VH">Victor Hugo</name>
      <user2:name xmlns:user2="myNamespace2" idd="VH">Victor Hugo</user2:name>
      <nationality>French</nationality>
   </author><!-- This is a very long comment the purpose is
       to test the default stylesheet for long comments-->
   <author period="classical">
      <name>Sophocles</name>
      <nationality>Greek</nationality>
   </author>
   <author>
      <name>Leo Tolstoy</name>
      <nationality>Russian</nationality>
   </author>
   <author>
      <name>Alexander Pushkin</name>
      <nationality>Russian</nationality>
   </author>
   <author period="classical">
      <name>Plato</name>
      <nationality>Greek</nationality>
   </author>
</authors>

Once the document is converted to your desired form, then you can perform any desired processing on the converted document.

You can create case-insensitive methods (extensions for usability), e.g.:

public static class XDocumentExtensions
{
    public static IEnumerable<XElement> ElementsCaseInsensitive(this XContainer source,  
        XName name)
    {
        return source.Elements()
            .Where(e => e.Name.Namespace == name.Namespace 
                && e.Name.LocalName.Equals(name.LocalName, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));
    }
}

XML is text. Just ToLower it before loading to whatever parser you are using.

So long as you don't have to validate against a schema and don't mind the values being all lower case, this should work just fine.

The fact is that any XML parser will be case sensitive. If it were not, it wouldn't be an XML parser.