Extracting from XML string

Question

How can I write a program that turns this XML string

<outer>
  <inner>
    <boom>
      <name>John</name>
      <address>New York City</address>
    </boom>

    <boom>
      <name>Daniel</name>
      <address>Los Angeles</address>
    </boom>

    <boom>
      <name>Joe</name>
      <address>Chicago</address>
    </boom>
  </inner>
</outer>

into this string

name: John
address: New York City

name: Daniel
address: Los Angeles

name: Joe
address: Chicago

Can LINQ make it easier?

You could use [LINQ2XML](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb387098.aspx) or [HTMLAgilityPack](http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/) .... — Arran, Jul 23 '13 at 12:26
Look at this. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12037085/convert-xml-to-json-using-c-linq — Tan, Jul 23 '13 at 12:26
You should look into learning XPath: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc164116.aspx — Geeky Guy, Jul 23 '13 at 12:27
@newStackExchangeInstance I'm interested in the reason for that. Could you please elaborate? — Geeky Guy, Jul 23 '13 at 12:45
@Renan XPath is an old, clunky technology that is stringly typed, and the error is way more specific. — It'sNotALie., Jul 23 '13 at 12:50

Cédric Bignon · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-23T13:15:38.577

With Linq-to-XML:

XDocument document = XDocument.Load("MyDocument.xml");  // Loads the XML document with to use with Linq-to-XML

var booms = from boomElement in document.Descendants("boom")  // Go through the collection of boom elements
            select String.Format("name: {0}" + Environment.NewLine + "address: {1}",  // Format the boom item
                                 boomElement.Element("name").Value,  // Gets the name value of the boom element
                                 boomElement.Element("address").Value);  // Gets the address value of the boom element

var result = String.Join(Environment.NewLine + Environment.NewLine, booms);  // Concatenates all boom items into one string with

Update

To generalize it with any elements in boom, the idea is the same.

var booms = from boomElement in document.Descendants("boom")  // Go through the collection of boom elements
            let boolChildren = (from boomElementChild in boomElement.Elements()  // Go through the collection of elements in the boom element
                                select String.Format("{0}: {1}",  // Formats the name of the element and its value
                                                     boomElementChild.Name.LocalName,  // Name of the element
                                                     boomElementChild.Value))  // Value of the element
            select String.Join(Environment.NewLine, boolChildren);  // Concatenate the formated child elements

The first and last lines remains the same.

Can you generalize this to "loop" through the elements within "boom" (not assuming the fixed "name" and "address")? — roger.james, Jul 23 '13 at 13:05
Thanks, that works. Can you add another update that allows me to filter out boom elements satisfying some arbitrary condition, e.g. where `address` contains "New" (in this case only "New York City", and only the first boom would show up)? — roger.james, Jul 23 '13 at 15:22
I created a separate question for this, feel free to take a shot at it: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17815090/adding-a-condition-filter-to-this-linq-code — roger.james, Jul 23 '13 at 15:53

Extracting from XML string

1 Answers1

Update

Linked