Get value from node with same name

Question

I'd like to retrieve information from an XML file, however the way it's formatted is pretty strange. Here it is...

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Careers>
    <CareerList>
        <CareerName></CareerName>
        <CareerDescription></CareerDescription>
    </CareerList>
    <CareerList>
        <CareerName>Cook</CareerName>
        <CareerDescription>Cooks food for people</CareerDescription>
    </CareerList>
</Careers>

I'd like to get the 2nd value, which would be Cook and the description which is Cooks food for people, but instead I'm getting only the empty node. For example...

    public string CareerDescription(string CareerFile)
    {
        XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
        xmlDoc.Load(CareerFile);
        string Description = xmlDoc.SelectSingleNode("Careers/CareerList/CareerDescription").InnerText;
        return Description;
    }

How would I select the second node instead of the first?

Answer 1

You can use an index in your XPath expression:

xmlDoc.SelectSingleNode("Careers/CareerList[2]/CareerDescription").InnerText

Personally I'd use LINQ to XML instead, mind you:

var doc = XDocument.Load(CareerFile);
return doc.Root
          .Elements("CareerList")
          .ElementAt(1) // 0-based
          .Element("CareerDescription")
          .Value;