How do I read and parse an XML file in C#?

Gajendra_77672 0
Viewed 854293

How do I read and parse an XML file in C#?

xml c#
12 Answers

XmlDocument to read an XML from string or from file.

using System.Xml;

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load("c:\\temp.xml");

or

doc.LoadXml("<xml>something</xml>");

then find a node below it ie like this

XmlNode node = doc.DocumentElement.SelectSingleNode("/book/title");

or

foreach(XmlNode node in doc.DocumentElement.ChildNodes){
   string text = node.InnerText; //or loop through its children as well
}

then read the text inside that node like this

string text = node.InnerText;

or read an attribute

string attr = node.Attributes["theattributename"]?.InnerText

Always check for null on Attributes["something"] since it will be null if the attribute does not exist.

Wolf5_376430

LINQ to XML Example:

// Loading from a file, you can also load from a stream
var xml = XDocument.Load(@"C:\contacts.xml");


// Query the data and write out a subset of contacts
var query = from c in xml.Root.Descendants("contact")
            where (int)c.Attribute("id") < 4
            select c.Element("firstName").Value + " " +
                   c.Element("lastName").Value;


foreach (string name in query)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Contact's Full Name: {0}", name);
}

Reference: LINQ to XML at MSDN

user_826860

There are lots of way, some:

  • XmlSerializer. use a class with the target schema you want to read - use XmlSerializer to get the data in an Xml loaded into an instance of the class.
  • Linq 2 xml
  • XmlTextReader.
  • XmlDocument
  • XPathDocument (read-only access)
Freddy_Rios_663720
Grzenio_53630

Linq to XML.

Also, VB.NET has much better xml parsing support via the compiler than C#. If you have the option and the desire, check it out.

Admin1
user_557740

If you want to retrive a particular value from an XML file

 XmlDocument _LocalInfo_Xml = new XmlDocument();
            _LocalInfo_Xml.Load(fileName);
            XmlElement _XmlElement;
            _XmlElement = _LocalInfo_Xml.GetElementsByTagName("UserId")[0] as XmlElement;
            string Value = _XmlElement.InnerText;
user_122089020

Here is another approach using Cinchoo ETL - an open source library to parse xml file with few lines of code.

using (var r = ChoXmlReader<Item>.LoadText(xml)
       .WithXPath("//item")
      )
{
    foreach (var rec in r)
        rec.Print();
}

public class Item
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string ProtectionLevel { get; set; }
    public string Description { get; set; }
}

Sample fiddle: https://dotnetfiddle.net/otYq5j

Disclaimer: I'm author of this library.

user_12885450
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