Removing nodes from an XmlDocument

Question

The following code should find the appropriate project tag and remove it from the XmlDocument, however when I test it, it says:

The node to be removed is not a child of this node.

Does anyone know the proper way to do this?

public void DeleteProject (string projectName)
{
    string ccConfigPath = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConfigPath"];

    XmlDocument configDoc = new XmlDocument();

    configDoc.Load(ccConfigPath);

    XmlNodeList projectNodes = configDoc.GetElementsByTagName("project");

    for (int i = 0; i < projectNodes.Count; i++)
    {
        if (projectNodes[i].Attributes["name"] != null)
        {
            if (projectName == projectNodes[i].Attributes["name"].InnerText)
            {                                                
                configDoc.RemoveChild(projectNodes[i]);
                configDoc.Save(ccConfigPath);
            }
        }
    }
}

UPDATE

Fixed. I did two things:

XmlNode project = configDoc.SelectSingleNode("//project[@name='" + projectName + "']");

Replaced the For loop with an XPath query, which wasn't for fixing it, just because it was a better approach.

The actual fix was:

project.ParentNode.RemoveChild(project);

Thanks Pat and Chuck for this suggestion.

I was looking for just this thing. I spent a half a day looking for xml stuff on the internet and half a minute on SO. Yet another reason why Jeff and Joel were on to something. — Anthony Potts, Dec 07 '09 at 19:29

score 73 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 21 '08 at 17:38

73

Instead of

configDoc.RemoveChild(projectNodes[i]);

try

projectNodes[i].parentNode.RemoveChild(projectNodes[i]);

answered Aug 21 '08 at 17:38

Pat

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 20 '12 at 09:43

When you get sufficiently annoyed by writing it the long way (for me that was fairly soon) you can use a helper extension method provided below. Yay new technology!

public static class Extensions {
    ...
    public static XmlNode RemoveFromParent(this XmlNode node) {
        return (node == null) ? null : node.ParentNode.RemoveChild(node);
    }
}
...
//some_long_node_expression.parentNode.RemoveChild(some_long_node_expression);
some_long_node_expression.RemoveFromParent();

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 21 '08 at 17:39

2

try

configDoc.DocumentElement.RemoveChild(projectNodes[i]);

answered Aug 21 '08 at 17:39

Jason

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score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 21 '08 at 17:41

2

Looks like you need to select the parent node of projectNodes[i] before calling RemoveChild.

answered Aug 21 '08 at 17:41

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 21 '08 at 17:34

1

Is it possible that the project nodes aren't child nodes, but grandchildren or lower? GetElementsByTagName will give you elements from anywhere in the child element tree, IIRC.

answered Aug 21 '08 at 17:34

Greg Hurlman

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score 0 · Answer 6 · edited Dec 16 '15 at 08:18

0

It would be handy to see a sample of the XML file you're processing but my guess would be that you have something like this

<Root>
 <Blah>
   <project>...</project>
 </Blah>
</Root>

The error message seems to be because you're trying to remove <project> from the grandparent rather than the direct parent of the project node

edited Dec 16 '15 at 08:18

Mr Lister

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answered Aug 21 '08 at 17:37

David Hayes

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Removing nodes from an XmlDocument

6 Answers6

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