CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#xml
Jimmy Collins
Jimmy Collins

Reputation: 3304

Find & replace certain text within a node in an XML file

I've got an XML in which I've got a number of nodes which contain paths, in which I (may) need to change some of the path if certain information is found.

For example, a node like this may exist:

<File name="dev\Desktop\Working\Test\English\1312\myopic.dll">

I need to find all paths that have a 4 digit number in the path (like '1312' above), and change this to something like %NUM%.

What's the best approach? My first thoughts were to use RegEx, but from some searching it seems like that's a bad idea?

Maybe LINQ to XML (I have some limited experience with that)?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 672

Answers (2)

Jalal Said
Jalal Said

Reputation: 16162

I think that Regex here is the most effecint solution here, It is not bad idea at all

string path = @""<File name=""dev\Desktop\Working\Test\English\1312\myopic.dll"">";
string pattern = @"\d\d\d\d";
Regex regex = new Regex(pattern);
string replacement = "%NUM%";

string result = regex.Replace(input, replacement);
//result is: <File name="dev\Desktop\Working\Test\English\%NUM%\myopic.dll">

Upvotes: 1

agent-j
agent-j

Reputation: 27903

It is XML, so why not use XElement.

On the other hand, if this is a one-time thing and you want KNOW that the pattern won't occur in the wrong parts of your XML, regex would be much faster to implement.

newFileContents = Regex.Replace(
   fileContents,
   @"(?<=dev\\Desktop\\Working\\Test\\English\\)\d+",
   "%num%);

Upvotes: 1

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