Parsing xml in vb

Question

I have a pretty generic xml file which I'm looking to parse, however, I'm not too sure where to find such a tutorial to read data from xml files. I'm looking to create a card game, and I'm looking to be able to create my own cards. I've already created the file that creates the cards but now I have to read them.

This is the format of my xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Cards>
<Card>
<ID>1</ID>
<Name>Cardsname</Name>
<Type>teetete</Type>
<Image>1gc.jpg</Image>
<Description>test</Description>
</Card>
</Cards>

As you can see, theres a root node called 'Cards' which contains all of the cards. I need to access this node and find all of the 'Card' nodes and their children (id, name, type, image). How would I access the text within these?

EDIT: Just figured out how to access it but can't figure out how to loop it. If i wanted to access multiple elements, how would I do so?

    Sub Main()
    Dim output As StringBuilder = New StringBuilder()
    Using reader As XmlReader = New XmlTextReader("C:\Godlycards\cards.xml")
        reader.ReadToFollowing("Card")
        reader.MoveToFirstAttribute()
        reader.ReadToFollowing("ID")
        output.AppendLine("ID: " + reader.ReadElementContentAsString())
        reader.ReadToFollowing("Name")
        output.AppendLine("Name: " + reader.ReadElementContentAsString())
        reader.ReadToFollowing("Type")
        output.AppendLine("Type: " + reader.ReadElementContentAsString())
        reader.ReadToFollowing("Image")
        output.AppendLine("Image: " + reader.ReadElementContentAsString())
        reader.ReadToFollowing("Description")
        output.AppendLine("Description: " + reader.ReadElementContentAsString())
        MessageBox.Show(output.ToString)
    End Using
End Sub

Thanks!

Answer 1

XDocument / XElement is a convenient way of handling things in your case. Consider this example:

Dim xml As XDocument = <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
                       <Cards>
                         <Card>
                           <ID>1</ID>
                           <Name>Cardsname</Name>
                           <Type>teetete</Type>
                           <Image>1gc.jpg</Image>
                           <Description>test</Description>
                         </Card>
                       </Cards>

Yes, you can paste raw xml into your code like this.

Then your collection of cards can be accessed using this approach:

Dim cards As IEnumerable(Of XElement) = xml.Root.Elements("Card")

For a particular card, you get its properties like this:

Dim cardID As String = cards(0).Element("ID").Value

As a side note, you would probably be using XDocument.Load or XDocument.Parse, instead of having your XML inline with your code. Rest is the same.