Fragmented XML string parsing with Linq

Question

Let's say I have a fragmented XML as follows.

<A>
  <B></B>
</A>
<A>
  <B></B>
</A>

I can use XmlReader with Fragment option to parse this not complete XML string.

XmlReaderSettings settings = new XmlReaderSettings();
settings.ConformanceLevel = ConformanceLevel.Fragment;
XmlReader reader;
using (StringReader stringReader = new StringReader(inputXml))
{
    reader = XmlReader.Create(stringReader, settings);
}
XPathDocument xPathDoc = new XPathDocument(reader);
XPathNavigator rootNode = xPathDoc.CreateNavigator();
XPathNodeIterator pipeUnits = rootNode.SelectChildren("A", string.Empty);
while (pipeUnits.MoveNext())

Can I do this fragmented XML string parsing with Linq?

Answer 1

Using the XNode.ReadFrom() method, you can easily create a method that returns a sequence of XNodes:

public static IEnumerable<XNode> ParseXml(string xml)
{
    var settings = new XmlReaderSettings
    {
        ConformanceLevel = ConformanceLevel.Fragment,
        IgnoreWhitespace = true
    };

    using (var stringReader = new StringReader(xml))
    using (var xmlReader = XmlReader.Create(stringReader, settings))
    {
        xmlReader.MoveToContent();
        while (xmlReader.ReadState != ReadState.EndOfFile)
        {
            yield return XNode.ReadFrom(xmlReader);
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

I'm not exactly an expert on this topic, but I can't see why this method wouldn't work:

XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse("<dummy>" + xmlFragment + "</dummy>");

The one thing about using this approach is that you have to remember that a dummy node is the root of your document. Obviously, you could always just query on the child Nodes property to get the information you need.