CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#xmlwindows-phone-8
helencrump
helencrump

Reputation: 1389

Parse an XML file in a Windows Phone 8 App

I know that there are already solutions to this, but I'm really struggling with this problem.

I need to load an XML document from a URL and parse it to extract various pieces of information. I've tried using:

var doc = new XDocument();
doc = XDocument.Load(url);

This works fine in a standalone C# application but it won't work in the phone app. I believe that I need to do this asynchronously using WebClient.DownloadStringAsync and WebClient.DownloadStringCompleted, but I don't know how to get the document back from this so that I can parse it.

Thanks for your help.

EDIT: If it's of any use, I'm trying to access the BigOven API and get the XML returned from that.

EDIT#2: Code after trying the asynchronous method.

public static string xml;
private static void DownloadCompleted(object sender, DownloadStringCompletedEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.Error == null)
    {
        xml = e.Result; // this is always null
    }
}
public static string QueryApi(string searchTerm)
{
    WebClient wc = new WebClient();
    wc.DownloadStringCompleted += DownloadCompleted;
    wc.DownloadStringAsync(new Uri("http://www.w3schools.com/xml/note.xml"));
    var doc = XDocument.Parse(xml);
}

EDIT#3: Code after trying to wait for the download to complete.

public static string xml;
public static XDocument doc;
private static void DownloadCompleted(object sender, DownloadStringCompletedEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.Error == null)
    {
        xml = e.Result; // this is always null
        doc = XDocument.Parse(xml);
    }
}
public static string QueryApi(string searchTerm)
{
    WebClient wc = new WebClient();
    wc.DownloadStringCompleted += DownloadCompleted;
    wc.DownloadStringAsync(new Uri("http://www.w3schools.com/xml/note.xml"));
}

Upvotes: 0

Views: 239

Answers (1)

George Brighton
George Brighton

Reputation: 5151

That looks much more convoluted than it should be. Similar to this answer, how about using HttpClient, available on Windows Phone since 7.5:

static XDocument GetXml(string url)
{
    using (HttpClient client = new HttpClient())
    {
        var response = client.GetStreamAsync(url);
        return XDocument.Load(response.Result);
    }
}

Upvotes: 1

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