How to read a xml file in App_Data with .NET MVC3 Framework according to controller?

Question

I need to read a XML file from App_Data in MVC3 according to the action that the user it's accessing at the moment.

<xml>
  <actions>
    <item action="index">
      <add url="www.stackoverflow.com" description="This site it's for learning purpouses" />
    </item>
  </actions>
</xml>

What would be the best way of getting that <item> according to the action user it's accessing?

EDIT

---

Forgot to mention that the XML may only be accessed by 1 controller. So the filename it's [controller].xml

Answer 1

You could use a XDocument and the XPathSelectElement extension method to parse XML:

public ActionResult Index()
{
    string action = RouteData.GetRequiredString("action");
    string controller = RouteData.GetRequiredString("controller");
    string appDataPath = Server.MapPath("~/app_data");
    string file = Path.Combine(appDataPath, controller + ".xml");
    var xpath = "//item[@action='" + action + "']";
    var item = XDocument.Load(file).XPathSelectElement(xpath);
    if (item != null)
    {
        var add = item.Element("add");
        var url = add.Attribute("url").Value;
        var description = add.Attribute("description").Value;
    }
    ...
}