how to ignore namespaces with XPath

Question

You can use the local-name() XPath function. Instead of selecting a node like

/path/to/x:somenode

you can select all nodes and filter for the one with the correct local name:

/path/to/*[local-name() = 'somenode']

You can do the same In XPath2.0 in a less verbose syntax:

/path/to/*:somenode

Or you can use name():

/path/to/*[name() = 'somenode']

Or only search attributes:

//*[@attribute="this one"]

If you open the xml as a powershell object, it ignores the namespaces:

[xml]$xml = get-content file.xml
$xml.path.to.somenode

You could use Namespace = false on a XmlTextReader

[TestMethod]
public void MyTestMethod()
{
    string _withXmlns = @"<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""utf-8""?>
<ParentTag xmlns=""http://anyNamespace.com"">
<Identification value=""ID123456"" />
</ParentTag>
";

    var xmlReader = new XmlTextReader(new MemoryStream(Encoding.Default.GetBytes(_withXmlns)));

    xmlReader.Namespaces = false;

    var content = XElement.Load(xmlReader);

    XElement elem = content.XPathSelectElement("/Identification");

    elem.Should().NotBeNull();
    elem.Attribute("value").Value.Should().Be("ID123456");
}

with :

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Linq;
using System.Xml.XPath;
using FluentAssertions;
using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;