Converting an XML-document to a dictionary

Question

I do not need to edit any XML-file or anything, this is only for reading and parsing.

I want to be able to handle the XML-document as a dictionary, like: username = doc["username"];, but I can't find out how to "convert" the document. I've also encountered the problem with duplicate key-names, but that could be easlily avoided by appending each value with 1, 2 etc; making it easy to for-loop through too.

Is this possible? To treat the (parsed) XML-document as a dictionary?

Answer to Mehrdad: It varies from time to time, it depends on the request from the user. If the user requests x, then it will be:

<xml>
    <test>foo</test>
    <bar>123</bar>
    <username>foobar</username>
</xml>

But if he requests y, it will be like

<xml>
    <ammount>1000</ammount>
    <mail>...@...</mail>
    <username>foobar</username>
</xml>

The best would be if this:

<xml>
<mengde>100</mengde>
<type>3</type>
<mail>foo</mail>
<crypt>bar</crypt>
<username>bar</username>
</xml>"

Could be parsed and then accessed as doc["mengde"] etc.

How do you want to handle subdocuments? What does doc["foo"] return in `145`? You need to explain how you want to access doc/foo/a for us to help. — jmucchiello, Nov 10 '09 at 20:01
Nodes which contain nodes will be ingnored, I only use the ones containing text. In your example: x, a and b. — Phoexo, Nov 10 '09 at 20:31

score 18 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 19 '15 at 16:26

You could use linq to xml to do what you want (if I understand what you want)

string data = "<data><test>foo</test><test>foobbbbb</test><bar>123</bar><username>foobar</username></data>";

XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(data);
Dictionary<string, string> dataDictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>();

foreach (XElement element in doc.Descendants().Where(p => p.HasElements == false)) {
    int keyInt = 0;
    string keyName = element.Name.LocalName;

    while (dataDictionary.ContainsKey(keyName)) {
        keyName = element.Name.LocalName + "_" + keyInt++;
    }

    dataDictionary.Add(keyName, element.Value);
}

Thank you! Worked excactly as excepted :) – Phoexo Nov 10 '09 at 20:37 — Phoexo, Nov 10 '09 at 20:37

score 5 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:31

XML Data

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<data>
    <resource key="123">foo</resource>
    <resource key="456">bar</resource>
    <resource key="789">bar</resource>  
</data>

Conversion Code

string s = "<data><resource key=\"123\">foo</resource><resource key=\"456\">bar</resource><resource key=\"789\">bar</resource></data>";
XmlDocument xml = new XmlDocument();
xml.LoadXml(s);
XmlNodeList resources = xml.SelectNodes("data/resource");
SortedDictionary<string,string> dictionary = new SortedDictionary<string,string>();
foreach (XmlNode node in resources){
   dictionary.Add(node.Attributes["key"].Value, node.InnerText);
}

This question was asked before here and so you can find the all answers in this link :

convert xml to sorted dictionary

Hope it helps.

Ty, but I'd rather be able to use the tag-name than to add an attribute to everything. — Phoexo, Nov 10 '09 at 19:23

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 10 '09 at 20:36

Your question's really not very clear, but I think this does what you want:

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.LoadXml(@"<xml>
<mengde>100</mengde>
<type>2</type>
<foo>bar</foo>
</xml>");

Dictionary<string, string> d = new Dictionary<string, string>();
foreach (XmlNode n in doc.SelectNodes("/xml/*")
{
   d[n.Name] = n.Value;
}

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 10 '09 at 19:09

0

This isn't exactly what you are looking for, but may be of interest: http://blogs.msdn.com/csharpfaq/archive/2009/10/01/dynamic-in-c-4-0-introducing-the-expandoobject.aspx

answered Nov 10 '09 at 19:09

nikmd23

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4
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That's for C# 4.0 and about the use of ExpandoObject and dynamic, so it doesn't help me. – Phoexo Nov 10 '09 at 19:22

Converting an XML-document to a dictionary

4 Answers4

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