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c#xmlxml-parsing
user1884155
user1884155

Reputation: 3736

Parsing an XML file that can be singleline or multiline

I have an XML file that can be one-line:

<webshop><item></item><item></item></webshop>

or multiline:

<webshop>
    <item>
    </item>
    <item>
    </item>
</webshop>

or mixed:

<webshop>
    <item></item>
    <item></item>
</webshop>

Each tag also has a short variant like <webshop/> and <item/> where the tag is opened and closed in one pair of < > brackets.

each tag can appaer any amount of times, but the <item></item> or <item/> tag will only appaer inside <webshop> ... </webshop>. Also, the entire xml tag hierarchy is much larger then just these two tags (but I kept it simple for this question), and each tag can have attributes.

I'm trying to parse such an xmlfile using an xmlreader in c#, but I always run into a problem.

If I try:

while(reader.ReadToFollowing("webshop"))
{
    Console.WriteLine("webshop");
    //get attributes of webshop tag and do something...

    while(reader.ReadToFollowing("item"))
    {
         Console.WriteLine("Item");
        //get attributes of item tag and do something...
    }
}

I never get all the data when the xml is singleline, mixed or the tags close themself (<item/> instead of <item></item>). Most of the time, the reader just stops after one instance of <webshop> or <item>

Is there a robust way to parse this xml, even if the exact lining is not known beforehand? I want to loop over all webshops, and for each webshop loop all over items, and then do something with this data.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1936

Answers (2)

Sven Grosen
Sven Grosen

Reputation: 5636

Here's a very simple Linq to XML way to read your xml file:

var xml = @"<webshop><item></item><item></item></webshop>";

var reader = XDocument.Parse(xml);

var webshops = from w in reader.Elements("webshop")
                select w;

foreach(var shop in webshops)
{
    var items = from i in shop.Elements("item")
                select i;

    //can now grab any attributes of the items
}

Without more details on the attributes in these elements, I can't provide much more detail in an example, but I think this is enough to show you how it can be done.

If you aren't going to do any filtering and just want all of the webshop elements and then their constituent item subelements, you can simplify what I have above like so:

var webshops = reader.Elements("webshop");

foreach(var shop in webshops)
{
    var items = shop.Elements("item");

    //can now grab any attributes of the items
}

I originally included the more verbose way of structuring the queries in case you wanted to do any filtering or wanted to do something more complex then simply selecting the given elements. This simplified method will produce the same results as my first example.

Upvotes: 4

Amila
Amila

Reputation: 3816

Please take a look at the answer in this stack overflow discussion.

binding xml elements to model in MVC4

Basically, there are many ways to read xml files in you c# code. It all depend on what you are trying to achieve and how flexible it has to be. I personally prefer to XmlSeriealizer as it translate the xml into c# objects. the only downside is that you have to define classes for the xml to translate into.

Upvotes: 1

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