Case insensitive XML parser in c#

Question

Everything you do with XML is case sensitive, I know that.

However, right now I find myself in a situation, where the software I'm writing would yield much fewer errors if I somehow made xml name/attribute recognition case insensitive. Case insensitive XPath would be a god sent.

Is there an easy way/library to do that in c#?

Answer 1

An XMl document can have two different elements named respectively: MyName and myName -- that are intended to be different. Converting/treating them as the same name is an error that can have gross consequences.

In case the above is not the case, then here is a more precise solution, using XSLT to process the document into one that only has lowercase element names and lowercase attribute names:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>
 <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

 <xsl:variable name="vUpper" select=
 "'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'"/>

 <xsl:variable name="vLower" select=
 "'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'"/>

 <xsl:template match="node()|@*">
     <xsl:copy>
       <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/>
     </xsl:copy>
 </xsl:template>

 <xsl:template match="*[name()=local-name()]" priority="2">
  <xsl:element name="{translate(name(), $vUpper, $vLower)}"
   namespace="{namespace-uri()}">
       <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/>
  </xsl:element>
 </xsl:template>

 <xsl:template match="*" priority="1">
  <xsl:element name=
   "{substring-before(name(), ':')}:{translate(local-name(), $vUpper, $vLower)}"
   namespace="{namespace-uri()}">
       <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/>
  </xsl:element>
 </xsl:template>

 <xsl:template match="@*[name()=local-name()]" priority="2">
  <xsl:attribute name="{translate(name(), $vUpper, $vLower)}"
   namespace="{namespace-uri()}">
       <xsl:value-of select="."/>
  </xsl:attribute>
 </xsl:template>

 <xsl:template match="@*" priority="1">
  <xsl:attribute name=
   "{substring-before(name(), ':')}:{translate(local-name(), $vUpper, $vLower)}"
   namespace="{namespace-uri()}">
     <xsl:value-of select="."/>
  </xsl:attribute>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

when this transformation is applied on any XML document, for example this one:

<authors xmlns:user="myNamespace">
  <?ttt This is a PI ?>
  <Author xmlns:user2="myNamespace2">
    <Name idd="VH">Victor Hugo</Name>
    <user2:Name idd="VH">Victor Hugo</user2:Name>
    <Nationality xmlns:user3="myNamespace3">French</Nationality>
  </Author>
  <!-- This is a very long comment the purpose is
       to test the default stylesheet for long comments-->
  <Author Period="classical">
    <Name>Sophocles</Name>
    <Nationality>Greek</Nationality>
  </Author>
  <author>
    <Name>Leo Tolstoy</Name>
    <Nationality>Russian</Nationality>
  </author>
  <Author>
    <Name>Alexander Pushkin</Name>
    <Nationality>Russian</Nationality>
  </Author>
  <Author Period="classical">
    <Name>Plato</Name>
    <Nationality>Greek</Nationality>
  </Author>
</authors>

the wanted, correct result (element and attribute names converted to lowercase) is produced:

<authors><?ttt This is a PI ?>
   <author>
      <name idd="VH">Victor Hugo</name>
      <user2:name xmlns:user2="myNamespace2" idd="VH">Victor Hugo</user2:name>
      <nationality>French</nationality>
   </author><!-- This is a very long comment the purpose is
       to test the default stylesheet for long comments-->
   <author period="classical">
      <name>Sophocles</name>
      <nationality>Greek</nationality>
   </author>
   <author>
      <name>Leo Tolstoy</name>
      <nationality>Russian</nationality>
   </author>
   <author>
      <name>Alexander Pushkin</name>
      <nationality>Russian</nationality>
   </author>
   <author period="classical">
      <name>Plato</name>
      <nationality>Greek</nationality>
   </author>
</authors>

Once the document is converted to your desired form, then you can perform any desired processing on the converted document.

Answer 2

You can create case-insensitive methods (extensions for usability), e.g.:

public static class XDocumentExtensions
{
    public static IEnumerable<XElement> ElementsCaseInsensitive(this XContainer source,  
        XName name)
    {
        return source.Elements()
            .Where(e => e.Name.Namespace == name.Namespace 
                && e.Name.LocalName.Equals(name.LocalName, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));
    }
}