I'm a LAMP guy and ended up working this small news module for an asp.net site, which I am having some difficulty with. I basically am adding and deleting elements via AJAX based on the id. Before, I had it working based on the the index of a set of elements, but would have issues deleting, since the index would change in the xml file and not on the page (since I am using ajax).

Here is the rundown

news.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<news>
  <article id="1">
    <title>Red Shield Environmental implements the PARCSuite system</title>
    <story>Add stuff here</story>
  </article>
  <article id="2">
    <title>Catalyst Paper selects PARCSuite for its Mill-Wide Process...</title>
    <story>Add stuff here</story>
  </article>
  <article id="3">
    <title>Weyerhaeuser uses Capstone Technology to provide Control...</title>
    <story>Add stuff here</story>
  </article>
</news>

Page sending del request:

<script type="text/javascript">
        $(document).ready(function () {
            $('.del').click(function () {
                var obj = $(this);
                var id = obj.attr('rel');
                $.post('add-news-item.aspx',
                    { id: id },
                    function () {
                        obj.parent().next().remove();
                        obj.parent().remove();
                    }
                );
            });
        });
    </script>
    <a class="del" rel="1">...</a>
    <a class="del" rel="1">...</a>
    <a class="del" rel="1">...</a>

My functions

protected void addEntry(string title, string story)
    {
        XmlDocument news = new XmlDocument();
        news.Load(Server.MapPath("../news.xml"));

        XmlAttributeCollection ids = news.Attributes;
        //Create a new node
        XmlElement newelement = news.CreateElement("article");
        XmlElement xmlTitle = news.CreateElement("title");
        XmlElement xmlStory = news.CreateElement("story");

        XmlAttribute id = ids[0];
        int myId = int.Parse(id.Value + 1);
        id.Value = ""+myId;
        newelement.SetAttributeNode(id);
        xmlTitle.InnerText = this.TitleBox.Text.Trim();
        xmlStory.InnerText = this.StoryBox.Text.Trim();


        newelement.AppendChild(xmlTitle);
        newelement.AppendChild(xmlStory);

        news.DocumentElement.AppendChild(newelement);

        news.Save(Server.MapPath("../news.xml"));
    }

    protected void deleteEntry(int selectIndex)
    {
        XmlDocument news = new XmlDocument();
        news.Load(Server.MapPath("../news.xml"));

        XmlNode xmlnode = news.DocumentElement.ChildNodes.Item(selectIndex);
        xmlnode.ParentNode.RemoveChild(xmlnode);
        news.Save(Server.MapPath("../news.xml"));
    }

I haven't updated deleteEntry() and you can see, I was using the array index but need to delete the article element based on the article id being passed. And when adding an entry, I need to set the id to the last elements id + 1. Yes, I know SQL would be 100 times easier, but I don't have access so... help?