CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#xmllinqlinq-to-xml
JamesEggers
JamesEggers

Reputation: 12935

How do I access child xml elements?

I have an xml string saved in a legacy database that I'm attempting to parse. I can get the string but having 2 issues getting the values that I need. First, some sample xml.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<email>
    <meta>
        <smartForm>
            <unit name="ForgotUsername" label="Forgot Username Email">
                <textBox name="FromEmail" label="From Email" type="Email" />
                <textBox name="FromName" label="From Name" type="100" />
                <textBox name="BccEmail" label="BCC" type="EmailList" />
                <textBox name="Subject" label="Subject" type="300" />
                <textBox2 name="TextBody" label="Body" type="Memo" />
            </unit>
            <unit name="ForgotPassword" label="Forgot Password Email">
                <textBox name="FromEmail" label="From Email" type="Email" />
                <textBox name="FromName" label="From Name" type="100" />
                <textBox name="BccEmail" label="BCC" type="EmailList" />
                <textBox name="Subject" label="Subject" type="300" />
                <textBox2 name="TextBody" label="Body" type="Memo" />
            </unit>
        </smartForm>
    </meta>
    <value>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?&gt;&lt;root&gt;&lt;ForgotPassword BccEmail="[email protected]" FromEmail="[email protected]" FromName="password test" Subject="password test" TextBody="info" /&gt;&lt;ForgotUsername BccEmail="[email protected]" FromEmail="[email protected]" FromName="test" Subject="test" TextBody="test" /&gt;&lt;/root&gt;</value>
</email>

Issue #1 - I attempted to parse the xml using XElement.Parse("string") however, I cannot get the <value> node unless I remove the xml declaration (i.e. first 39 characters). I'm hoping to not HAVE to do this since it's a brittle solution.

Issue #2 - Once I have the <value> element's contents and parsed into an XElement, I want the query to either the <ForgotUsername> or <ForgotPassword> child node of the <root> document element. When I got .Elements(), I'm told the collection is null.

What am I doing wrong?

The Value's XML after entities are replaced:

<root>
    <ForgotPassword BccEmail="[email protected]" FromEmail="[email protected]" FromName="password test" Subject="password test" TextBody="info" />
    <ForgotUsername BccEmail="[email protected]" FromEmail="[email protected]" FromName="test" Subject="test" TextBody="test" />
</root>

UPDATES: After trying abatishchev's initial suggestion - I changed the code for issue #1 to the following:

var xdoc = XDocument.Parse(contentXml);
return (from element in xdoc.Elements("value")
        select element.Value).FirstOrDefault();

Based on the information provided, it should return the string in the value node; however, it's returning null. The xdoc.Elements() (or as shown in the above snippet) return null.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2555

Answers (3)

Chuck Savage
Chuck Savage

Reputation: 11945

For #1:

XElement doc = XElement.Load(file);
XElement valueElement = doc.Element("value");
string value = (string)valueElement;

Upvotes: 0

abatishchev
abatishchev

Reputation: 100238

  • Use XDocument.Parse() to create a document supporting XML declaration

  • To get units, use

    XDocument.Parse("...").Root // or Element("email")
    .Elements("meta")
        .Elements("smartForm")
            .Elements("unit");

  • or use XPath: email/meta/smartForm/unit

  • also you can use query-style:

    var doc = XDocument.Parse("...");
var q = from meta in doc.Root.Elements("meta")
        from smartForm in meta.Elements("smartForm")
        from unit in smartForm.Elements("unit")
        select unit;

Upvotes: 2

dahlbyk
dahlbyk

Reputation: 77500

The following works for me:

var xd = XDocument.Load("Test.xml");
var xv = XDocument.Parse((string)xd.Root.Element("value"));
Console.WriteLine(xv.Root.Elements().Count());

Output is 2, for ForgotPassword and ForgotUsername.

Upvotes: 1

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