What is a good way to read this XML?

Question

What is a good way to read this XML? Or maybe I can structure the XML differently.

What I want is the process to be the main thing and then you could have any number of related process to follow.

  <Job>
    <Process>*something.exe</Process>
    <RelatedToProcess>*somethingelse.exe</RelatedToProcess>
    <RelatedToProcess>*OneMorething.exe</RelatedToProcess>
  </Job>

I am currently using a XmlNodeList and reading the innertext and then splitting the string on * but I know there has to be a better way.

Answer 1

I suggest you to use Linq To Xml. You can load your xml in XDocument and then access each separate XElement by name or path.

Answer 2

Try this console app:

class Program
{
    public class Job
    {
        public string Process { get; set; }
        public IList<string> RelatedProcesses { get; set; }
    }
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var xml = "<Job>" +
                    "<Process>*something.exe</Process>" +
                        "<RelatedToProcess>*somethingelse.exe</RelatedToProcess>" +
                        "<RelatedToProcess>*OneMorething.exe</RelatedToProcess>" +
                      "</Job>";
        var jobXml = XDocument.Parse(xml);

        var jobs = from j in jobXml.Descendants("Job")
                    select new Job
                    {
                        Process = j.Element("Process").Value,
                        RelatedProcesses = (from r in j.Descendants("RelatedToProcess")
                                            select r.Value).ToList()
                    };

        foreach (var t in jobs)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(t.Process);
            foreach (var relatedProcess in t.RelatedProcesses)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(relatedProcess);
            }
        }

        Console.Read();

    }
}