How to get value of child node from XDocument

Question

I need to get value of child node from XDocument using linq

<root>
<Cust>
     <ACTNumber>1234</ACTNumber>
     <Address>
         <Street></Street>
         <City>123 Main street</City>
         <State>AL</State>
     </Address>
</Cust>
</root>

I tried this: xDocTest.Root.Elements("Cust").Elements("ACTNumber")

If I try Address instead of ACTNumber then it works. But its not giving the child node value.

Jon Skeet · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-18T06:03:48.260

46

If there's only one Cust element and only one ACTNumber element, then it's easy:

string actNumber = doc.Root.Element("Cust").Element("ACTNumber").Value;

Or to get it as a long:

long actNumber = (long) doc.Root.Element("Cust").Element("ACTNumber");

edited Apr 18 '14 at 06:03

answered Apr 25 '13 at 18:45

Jon Skeet

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is it really necessary to put `doc.Root.Element().Element()`? What is the shortest way to get to "ACTNumber" straight away, first occurence, no matter what level it is found in? – MarioDS Oct 10 '14 at 13:55
4

@MDeSchaepmeester: For that, you'd use `doc.Descendants("ACTNumber").First()` – Jon Skeet Oct 10 '14 at 14:04

CSharpie · Answer 2 · 2013-04-25T18:19:50.067

8

Use this:

xDocTest.Root.Element("Cust").Element("Adress").Element("City").Value

If you use Elements (note the plural) it gives u an IEnumerable, this would be used like this:

XML

<Father>
    <Child>Hello</Child>
    <Child>World!</Child>
</Father>

C#

foreach(var childElement in Root.Elements("Child")) Console.WriteLine(childElement.Value);

Or to take your example:

foreach(var child in xdoc.Root.Element("Cust").Element("Address").Elements()) 
    Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} : {1}", child.Name, child.Value);

Im not sure how Element behaves if you have multiple Elements of the same name. So you might want to use Elements and Inerate over all occurences.

And in Linq If there is more than one Customer...

var result = from cust in xdoc.Root.Elements("Cust")

             where cust.Elements("ACTNumber").Any() // This is to make sure there
                                                    // is an element called ACTNumber
                                                    // otherwise .Value would create
                                                    // Nullrefexception.

             select child.Element("ACTNumber").Value;

edited Apr 25 '13 at 18:19

answered Apr 25 '13 at 18:03

CSharpie

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You can't, that's the primary point of a code block, to prevent any markup from being treated as markup instead of text. – Servy Apr 25 '13 at 18:07
I wanted to use it in my sentence starting with "If you use..." – CSharpie Apr 25 '13 at 18:09
I want to get ACTNumber value and prefer linq expression so that I won't need to write for loop for each element – user1532976 Apr 25 '13 at 18:09
That shouldnt be so hard to turn a foreach into a from...select – CSharpie Apr 25 '13 at 18:11
@user1532976: Will there definitely only be one ACTNumber? – Jon Skeet Apr 25 '13 at 18:21
I took my example back and set it to one ACTNumber per customer. If that isnt enought examplecode to understand how things work, there might be some way different problem here... – CSharpie Apr 25 '13 at 18:22
@Jon Skeet Yes there will be only one ACTNumber. – user1532976 Apr 25 '13 at 18:38

How to get value of child node from XDocument

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