How to get an element that has : in its name?

Question

I need to get the CountryName from this XML: http://api.hostip.info/?ip=12.215.42.19

The response XML is:

<HostipLookupResultSet version="1.0.1"
  xmlns:gml="http://www.opengis.net/gml"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://www.hostip.info/api/hostip-1.0.1.xsd">

  <gml:description>This is the Hostip Lookup
  Service</gml:description>
  <gml:name>hostip</gml:name>
  <gml:boundedBy>
    <gml:Null>inapplicable</gml:Null>
  </gml:boundedBy>
  <gml:featureMember>
    <Hostip>
      <ip>12.215.42.19</ip>
      <gml:name>Sugar Grove, IL</gml:name>
      <countryName>UNITED STATES</countryName>
      <countryAbbrev>US</countryAbbrev>
      <!-- Co-ordinates are available as lng,lat -->
      <ipLocation>
        <gml:pointProperty>
          <gml:Point srsName="http://www.opengis.net/gml/srs/epsg.xml#4326">

            <gml:coordinates>-88.4588,41.7696</gml:coordinates>
          </gml:Point>
        </gml:pointProperty>
      </ipLocation>
    </Hostip>
  </gml:featureMember>
</HostipLookupResultSet>

Problem is I can't include : in the Descendants method because it throws:

XmlException: The ':' chracater, hexadecimal value 0x3A, cannot be included in a name.

Thanks

Answer 1

try this

var descendants = from i in XDocument.Load(xml).Descendants("Hostip")
select i.Element("countryName");

Update

complete code for downloading the xml and finding the name of countryName

string xml;
using(var web = new WebClient())
{
xml = web.DownloadString("http://api.hostip.info/?ip=12.215.42.19");
}
var descendants = from i in XDocument.Parse(xml).Descendants("Hostip")
select i.Element("countryName");

Answer 2

A small example on how to apply namespaces in LINQ to XML:

XElement doc = XElement.Load("test.xml");
XNamespace ns = "http://www.opengis.net/gml";

var firstName = doc.Descendants(ns + "name").First().Value;

Answer 3

You need to reference the gml namespace; once you've done that you should be able to navigate using the tag names that appear to the right of "gml:"

UPDATE

I'm not sure what context you're applying this to, but here's a sample console app that works:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml.Linq;

namespace LinqToXmlSample
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            XElement x = XElement.Load("http://api.hostip.info/?ip=12.215.42.19");
            foreach (XElement hostip in x.Descendants("Hostip"))
            {
                string country = Convert.ToString(hostip.Element("countryName").Value);
                Console.WriteLine(country);
            }
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}