In my last two posts (part 1 and part 2) I’ve been introducing you to the the new XML classes in .NET 3.5. In this post I’ll continue that and show you some of the ways to navigate through XML.

First of all, lets start with a simple hierarchy of XML elements:

XElement root = new XElement("FirstGeneration",
                    new XElement("SecondGeneration",
                        new XElement("ThirdGeneration",
                            new XElement("FourthGeneration"))));

Which looks like this when rendered as XML:

<FirstGeneration>

<SecondGeneration>

<ThirdGeneration>

<FourthGeneration />

</ThirdGeneration>

</SecondGeneration>

</FirstGeneration>

Also in the last post I used Element to get a specific element from the current element. For example:

XElement child = root.Element("SecondGeneration");

Elements

If root (or FirstGeneration) only had one child element called “SecondGeneration” then everything is fine, you get what you asked for. However, if it contains multiple children all called “SecondGeneration” then you will only get the first element called “SecondGeneration”.

For example, if you add the following to the code above:

root.Add(new XElement("SecondGeneration","2"));
root.Add(new XElement("SecondGeneration","3"));

You will get a piece of XML that looks like this:

<FirstGeneration>

<SecondGeneration>

<ThirdGeneration>

<FourthGeneration />

</ThirdGeneration>

</SecondGeneration>

<SecondGeneration>2</SecondGeneration>

<SecondGeneration>3</SecondGeneration>

</FirstGeneration>

If you want to get all those additional children called “SecondGeneration” you will need to use the Elements (note the plural) method. For example:

IEnumerable<XElement> children = root.Elements("SecondGeneration");

You’ll also note that we don’t get a collection returned but an enumerable. This give us the opportunity to exploit many of the new extension methods. But I’ll leave them for another post. For the moment, we just need to know that it make it easy for us to enumerate over the data using a foreach loop. For example:

foreach (XElement child in children)
{
    Console.WriteLine(child);
    Console.WriteLine(new string('-', 50));
}

This will write out:

<SecondGeneration>

<ThirdGeneration>

<FourthGeneration />

</ThirdGeneration>

</SecondGeneration>

————————————————–

<SecondGeneration>2</SecondGeneration>

————————————————–

<SecondGeneration>3</SecondGeneration>

————————————————–

Parent

Using the same root object as above, we can see how to navigate back up the XML tree using Parent.

XElement grandchild = root.Element("SecondGeneration").Element("ThirdGeneration");
Console.WriteLine(grandchild.Parent);

The result of the code will be that the SecondGeneration element is printed.

 

This just occurred to me. It is somewhat pointless, but I thought it was interesting:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    var result = from say in Enumerable.Range(1, 100)
                 select (say % 15 == 0) ? "BuzzFizz" :
                    (say % 5 == 0) ? "Buzz" :
                        (say % 3 == 0) ? "Fizz" : say.ToString();
    foreach (string say in result)
        Console.WriteLine(say);
}

In my last post I gave a brief introduction to some of the new XML classes available in .NET 3.5. In this post I’ll continue that introduction by explaining how to get information out of the XML.

First off, lets assume we have some XML that looks like this:

XElement root = new XElement("root",
    new XAttribute("Attribute", "TheValue"),
    new XElement("FirstChild"),
    new XElement("SecondChild", new XElement("Grandchild", "The content of the grandchild")));

or, if you prefer in XML format, like this:

<root Attribute=”TheValue”>

<FirstChild />

<SecondChild>

<Grandchild>The content of the grandchild</Grandchild>

</SecondChild>

</root>

There are a number of ways to get the content of the grandchild element. For example:

Console.WriteLine(root.Element("SecondChild").Element("Grandchild").Value);

Value returns a string which contains the content of the element specified. In the above case it will output:

The content of the grandchild

However, you need to watch out for when there are child elements of the thing you want the value of as their content is included when you get the value. For example, if the above XML is extended so that it looks like this:

<root Attribute=”TheValue”>

<FirstChild />

<SecondChild>

<Grandchild>The content of the grandchild

<Great-grandchild>GGC content</Great-grandchild>

<Grandchild>

</SecondChild>

</root>

And the above line of C# is executed again, the result is now:

The content of the grandchildGGC content

As you can see the content of the element you want plus its child elements are now returned. This may not necessarily be what you want.

There is a second way to get the content from an element. That is to use a casting operator. You can cast the element to a number of types. In this case to a string. for example:

Console.WriteLine((string)root.Element("SecondChild").Element("Grandchild"));

The result is the same as calling Value on the element.

Be careful here, because casting an element to a string will not have the same result as calling ToString() on an element. You can see that if you simply pass the element itself to writeline (which will then call ToString() for you). For example:

Console.WriteLine(root.Element("SecondChild").Element("Grandchild"));

The result is:

<Grandchild>The content of the grandchild

<Great-grandchild>GGC content</Great-grandchild>

</Grandchild>

The process is similar if you are dealing with attribute. Using the above XML as an example, an attribute value can be retrieved like this:

Console.WriteLine(root.Attribute("Attribute").Value);

Or, using the cast operator to a string like this:

Console.WriteLine((string)root.Attribute("Attribute"));

Both of the above pieces of code output the same thing: TheValue

If you were to call WriteLine on an XAttribute object you’ll see that the ToString() method returns something slightly different. It returns this: Attribute=”TheValue”

Lets say, for instance, that the Attribute had a value of 123.456, which is a valid number representation. I mentioned earlier about casting operators on XElement and XAttribute. Well, you can cast this to a double if you prefer to get the value in that type. There is no tedious converting in your own code as the framework can handle that for you. For example:

(double)root.Attribute("Attribute")

That’s it for this post. There will be more on XML and LINQ soon.