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c#xmlarrays
Ebikeneser
Ebikeneser

Reputation: 2364

Parse xml data into an array in C#

How can I parse XML data into an array using C#?

<details> 
 <row> 
  <var name="Year" value="&quot;2008&quot;" /> 
  <var name="person" value="&quot;10202&quot;" /> 
 </row> 
 <row> 
  <var name="Year" value="&quot;2007&quot;" /> 
  <var name="person" value="&quot;11202&quot;" /> 
 </row> 
</details>

Upvotes: 1

Views: 14316

Answers (3)

Domenic
Domenic

Reputation: 112807

From the example, it looks to me like you are hoping to get this:

var rows = XDocument.Load("filename.xml")
                    .Root.Elements()
                    .Select(row => row.Elements()
                                      .ToDictionary(v => v.Attribute("name").Value,
                                                    v => v.Attribute("value").Value);

This will create an IEnumerable<Dictionary<string, string>>, where each entry in the IEnumerable is a "row" and each entry in the inner dictionaries is a "variable".

If you are looking to create a more strongly-typed solution, and can guarantee the XML structure is always two variables, one named budgetYear and one named account, then something like this would work:

// Probably needs a better name.
struct YearAndAccount
{
    private readonly int budgetYear;
    private readonly string accountId;

    public int BudgetYear { get { return this.budgetYear; } }
    public string AccountId { get { return this.accountId; } }

    public YearAndAccount(int budgetYear, string accountId)
    {
        this.budgetYear = budgetYear;
        this.accountId = accountId;
    }
}

var rows = XDocument.Load("filename.xml")
                    .Root.Elements()
                    .Select(row => new YearAndAccount(
                        int.Parse(row.Elements().Single(el => el.Attribute("name").Value == "budgetYear")
                                                      .Attribute("value").Value),
                        row.Elements().Single(el => el.Attribute("name").Value == "account")
                                      .Attribute("value").Value));

This will create an IEnumerable<YearAndAccount>.

The parsing code for the strongly-typed solution is so amazingly icky because your XML is very poorly structured; a better structure would be something like

<details>
 <yearAndAccount>
   <budgetYear>2008</budgetYear>
   <account>10202</account>
 </yearAndAccount>
 <yearAndAccount>
   <budgetYear>2007</budgetYear>
   <account>11202</account>
 </yearAndAccount>
</details>

in which case the code would simply be

var rows = XDocument.Load("filename.xml")
                    .Root.Elements()
                    .Select(row => new YearAndAccount(row.Element("budgetYear").Value,
                                                      int.Parse(row.Element("account").Value)));

Upvotes: 4

The Smallest
The Smallest

Reputation: 5773

Xml Serialization/Deserialization in .Net can be achieved by:

  1. XmlSerializer and Xml*Attributes in System.Xml.Serialization namespace
  2. DataContactSerializer and DataContract+DataMember attributes
  3. XmlReader and XmlWriter + Linq - processing raw xml-files.

Upvotes: 2

Oded
Oded

Reputation: 498904

What you want to achieve is called deserialization - there are many ways to achieve it.

In the .NET framework, one of the newer classes with good control over how this is achieved is the DataContractSerializer. You can see an example of how it works in the example at the bottom of the linked documentation.

Without concrete examples, this is as far as I can help.

Upvotes: 0

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