How do I read and parse an XML file in C#?

Question

How do I read and parse an XML file in C#?

Answer 1

XmlDocument to read an XML from string or from file.

using System.Xml;

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load("c:\\temp.xml");

or

doc.LoadXml("<xml>something</xml>");

then find a node below it ie like this

XmlNode node = doc.DocumentElement.SelectSingleNode("/book/title");

or

foreach(XmlNode node in doc.DocumentElement.ChildNodes){
   string text = node.InnerText; //or loop through its children as well
}

then read the text inside that node like this

string text = node.InnerText;

or read an attribute

string attr = node.Attributes["theattributename"]?.InnerText

Always check for null on Attributes["something"] since it will be null if the attribute does not exist.

Answer 2

LINQ to XML Example:

// Loading from a file, you can also load from a stream
var xml = XDocument.Load(@"C:\contacts.xml");


// Query the data and write out a subset of contacts
var query = from c in xml.Root.Descendants("contact")
            where (int)c.Attribute("id") < 4
            select c.Element("firstName").Value + " " +
                   c.Element("lastName").Value;


foreach (string name in query)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Contact's Full Name: {0}", name);
}

Reference: LINQ to XML at MSDN

Answer 3

Here's an application I wrote for reading xml sitemaps:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Windows.Forms; 
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.IO;
using System.Data;
using System.Xml;

namespace SiteMapReader
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Please Enter the Location of the file");

            // get the location we want to get the sitemaps from 
            string dirLoc = Console.ReadLine();

            // get all the sitemaps 
            string[] sitemaps = Directory.GetFiles(dirLoc);
            StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(Application.StartupPath + @"\locs.txt", true);

            // loop through each file 
            foreach (string sitemap in sitemaps)
            {
                try
                {
                    // new xdoc instance 
                    XmlDocument xDoc = new XmlDocument();

                    //load up the xml from the location 
                    xDoc.Load(sitemap);

                    // cycle through each child noed 
                    foreach (XmlNode node in xDoc.DocumentElement.ChildNodes)
                    {
                        // first node is the url ... have to go to nexted loc node 
                        foreach (XmlNode locNode in node)
                        {
                            // thereare a couple child nodes here so only take data from node named loc 
                            if (locNode.Name == "loc")
                            {
                                // get the content of the loc node 
                                string loc = locNode.InnerText;

                                // write it to the console so you can see its working 
                                Console.WriteLine(loc + Environment.NewLine);

                                // write it to the file 
                                sw.Write(loc + Environment.NewLine);
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
                catch { }
            }
            Console.WriteLine("All Done :-)"); 
            Console.ReadLine(); 
        }

        static void readSitemap()
        {
        }
    }
}

Code on Paste Bin http://pastebin.com/yK7cSNeY

Answer 4

There are lots of way, some:

• XmlSerializer. use a class with the target schema you want to read - use XmlSerializer to get the data in an Xml loaded into an instance of the class.
• Linq 2 xml
• XmlTextReader.
• XmlDocument
• XPathDocument (read-only access)