Reading in XML in C# - Grab specific Element

Question

I'm reading in some XML and displaying it in a DataGridView which works great.

However, my life would be 10x easier if I could grab specific Elements and read their content. (Im using XmlReader)

Additionally, is there a simple way to loop through an element? I need to grab the count and then loop through each "Facility" but I cant seem to get this working properly. Adding another "While(read)" in wasnt a great solution.

I would prefer not to switch to another reader at this time, I'm in to deep with this one at the moment.

XML Data:

    <data>
    <count>2</count>
    <facility>
        <typeId>1</typeId>
        <type>Beds</type>
        <quantity>0</quantity>
        <description>null</description>
    </facility>
    <facility>
        <typeId>2</typeId>
        <type>EDBeds</type>
        <quantity>0</quantity>
        <description>null</description>
    </facility>
</data>

Code:

while (xr.Read())
{
    if (xr.Name.Equals("count"))
    {
        valueName.Text = "We currently have " + xr.ReadElementContentAsString() + " facilities open.";
    }
    while (xr.ReadToFollowing("facility"))
    {
        //Add a new row for data if we are at a new Facility element
        if (xr.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element && xr.Name == "facility")
        {
            row = generalData.Rows.Add();
            col = 0;
        }
        //Loop through current facility Element
    }
}

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

See this post why you should prefer XDocument over XmlReader. As it states the API for XDocument is alot easier and supports 'LINQ To XML'. XmlReader is has become obsolete since it's out dated and contains bugs.

var xml = @"
<data>
    <count>2</count>
    <facility>
        <typeId>1</typeId>
        <type>Beds</type>
        <quantity>0</quantity>
        <description>null</description>
    </facility>
    <facility>
        <typeId>2</typeId>
        <type>EDBeds</type>
        <quantity>0</quantity>
        <description>null</description>
    </facility>
</data>";

var xDocument = XDocument.Load( new StringReader( xml ) );
var facilityElements = xDocument.Descendants().Where( x => x.Name == "facility" );

// Count the elements
var count = facilityElements.Count();

foreach ( var facilityElement in facilityElements )
{
    // Handle elements
}

// Adds an facility element
var facility = new XElement( "facility" );
var typeId = new XElement( "typeId" );
typeId.SetValue(3);
facility.Add( typeId );
xDocument.Element( "data" ).Add( facility );

I totally agree, If anyone see's this question I would highly recommend using a different reader. XmlReader was a bit of a hassle. — Nihat, Dec 16 '15 at 22:10

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 17 '15 at 06:03

1

For the given XML data, we don't need to loop through every 'facility' elements to bind it's data on DataGridView.

Instead, we could follow below easy steps,

DataSet ds = new DataSet();
ds.ReadXml(xr);
dataGridView1.DataSource = ds.Tables["facility"];

--SJ

answered Dec 17 '15 at 06:03

codeninja.sj

3,452
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Fantastic! This will do – Nihat Dec 17 '15 at 16:38

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 16 '15 at 21:52

Jumped the gun, using "ReadSubTree()" works well for this:

                    XmlReader inner = xr.ReadSubtree();
                    while (inner.Read())
                    {
                        if (xr.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Text)
                        {
                             //Do stuff
                        }
                    }

Reading in XML in C# - Grab specific Element

3 Answers3