Get attribute values from matching XML nodes using XPath query

Question

This doesn't seem like it should be difficult, but I'm stuck currently. I'm trying to get the attribute values for a particular attribute from nodes that match a given XPath query string. Here's what I have so far:

    public static IEnumerable<string> GetAttributes(this XmlDocument xml,
        string xpathQuery, string attributeName)
    {
        var doc = new XPathDocument(new XmlNodeReader(xml));
        XPathNavigator nav = doc.CreateNavigator();
        XPathExpression expr = nav.Compile(xpathQuery);
        XPathNodeIterator iterator = nav.Select(expr);
        while (iterator.MoveNext())
        {
            XPathNavigator curNav = iterator.Current;
            if (curNav.HasAttributes)
            {
                XmlNode curNode = ((IHasXmlNode)curNav).GetNode();
                if (null != curNode)
                {
                    XmlAttribute attrib = curNode.Attributes[attributeName];
                    if (null != attrib)
                    {
                        yield return attrib.Value;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }

This currently throws an exception:

System.InvalidCastException: Unable to cast object of type 'MS.Internal.Xml.Cache.XPathDocumentNavigator' to type 'System.Xml.IHasXmlNode'.

Am I going about this wrong? Is there a simpler way to get attribute values from matching nodes?

Answer 1

If you're using .net 3.5 or later you could use linq to Xml

For a given xml document

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<root>
  <storedProcedures>
    <storedProcedure name="usp_GET_HOME_PAGE_DATA">
      <resultSet name="Features"/>
      <resultSet name="Highlights"/>
    </storedProcedure>
    <storedProcedure name="usp_GET_FEATURES" />
    <storedProcedure name="usp_GET_FEATURE" />
    <storedProcedure name="usp_UPDATE_FEATURE" />
    <storedProcedure name="usp_GET_FEATURE_FOR_DISPLAY">
      <resultSet name="CurrentFeature"/>
      <resultSet name="OtherFeatures"/>
    </storedProcedure>
    <storedProcedure name="usp_GET_HIGHLIGHT_TITLES">
      <resultSet name="Highlights"/>
    </storedProcedure>
  </storedProcedures>
</root>

The following linq expression will get you the values of the "name" attributes of all storedProcedure node

XDocument xDcoument = XDocument.Load(xmlStoredProcSchemeFile);

  var storedProcedureNames = from doc in xDcoument.Descendants("storedProcedure")
                             select doc.Attribute("name").Value;

you could also use regular XPath syntax. In the code below the variable node holds the node identified by the "usp_GET_HOME_PAGE_DATA" name and then the attributes variable holds all child nodes (the attributes) of the selected node and it's children.

  XmlDocument xmlDocument = new XmlDocument();
  xmlDocument.Load(@"C:\inetpub\wwwroot\ASPNETBuilder\BusinessLayer\DataAccessCodeGenerationSchema.xml");
  var node = xmlDocument.DocumentElement.SelectSingleNode("./storedProcedures/storedProcedure[@name='usp_GET_HOME_PAGE_DATA']");
  var attributes = node.SelectNodes("./resultSet/@name");