New to xml and how to read an xml doc advise needed

New to xml and how to read an xml doc advise needed

• Nate_CeeCual_n_D0TN3t

  1) Here you can find a sample code for looping through XML nodes: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xmlreader.read(VS.80).aspx

  2) If you are going to post-process the XML document, XmlDocument is more appropriate. If you need just to convert the XML document into a string representation, then XmlTextWriter is more efficient choice, because it won't cache the whole document in the memory.

  MSDN has a number of good articles devoted to using XML in .NET, for example:

  http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/01/01/xml/

  Also there is a nice book "Applied XML Programming for Microsoft .NET".

  Hope it helps,
  Anton

  
  

• Venkat Manohar

  Thanks alot for your very good replies.

  It helped me a lot

  
  

• Suren...

  The same could be done with a XPathNavigator, you may use XPath navigator to navigate though the result of an XPath query... Here is a sample.

  static void TraverseElementsAndAttributes()

  {

  XPathDocument xdoc = new XPathDocument("xs\\travers.xml");

  XPathNavigator xnav = xdoc.CreateNavigator();

  TraverseElement(xnav);

  }

  static void TraverseElement(XPathNavigator xnav)

  {

  //print attributes

  if (xnav.MoveToFirstAttribute())

  {

  Console.WriteLine("Attribute: " + xnav.Name + ", Value: " + xnav.Value);

  while (xnav.MoveToNextAttribute())

  {

  Console.WriteLine("Attribute: " + xnav.Name + ", Value: " + xnav.Value);

  }

  xnav.MoveToParent();

  }

  //print element content

  if (xnav.NodeType == XPathNodeType.Text)

  Console.WriteLine("Text: " + xnav.Value.Trim());

  else if (xnav.NodeType == XPathNodeType.Element)

  Console.WriteLine("Element: " + xnav.Name + ", InnerXml: " + xnav.InnerXml);

  //go to first child

  if (xnav.MoveToFirstChild())

  {

  Console.WriteLine("...Moved to first child");

  TraverseElement(xnav);

  }

  //go to next child (as we didn't go parent, we are going to next sibling)

  while (xnav.MoveToNext(XPathNodeType.Element))

  {

  Console.WriteLine("...Moved to next sibling");

  TraverseElement(xnav);

  }

  //go back to the node itself to reset the state of the navigator to this node.

  xnav.MoveToParent();

  Console.WriteLine("...Moved to patent");

  return;

  }

  INPUT:

  < xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" >

  <root>

  <a attra="attra" />

  <b attrb1="attrb1" attrb2="attrb2">

  bvalue

  <c attrc="attrc">

  cvalue

  <d>dvalue</d>

  </c>

  <e attre="attre" />

  <f attrc="attrc">

  fvalue

  <g>

  <h>hvalue</h>gvalue</g>

  <i>ivalue</i>

  </f>

  </b>

  </root>

  output:

  ...Moved to first child
  Element: root, InnerXml: <a attra="attra" />
  <b attrb1="attrb1" attrb2="attrb2">
  bvalue
  <c attrc="attrc">
  cvalue
  <d>dvalue</d></c><e attre="attre" /><f attrc="attrc">
  fvalue
  <g><h>hvalue</h>gvalue</g><i>ivalue</i></f></b>
  ...Moved to first child
  Attribute: attra, Value: attra
  Element: a, InnerXml:
  ...Moved to next sibling
  Attribute: attrb1, Value: attrb1
  Attribute: attrb2, Value: attrb2
  Element: b, InnerXml:
  bvalue
  <c attrc="attrc">
  cvalue
  <d>dvalue</d></c><e attre="attre" /><f attrc="attrc">
  fvalue
  <g><h>hvalue</h>gvalue</g><i>ivalue</i></f>
  ...Moved to first child
  Text: bvalue
  ...Moved to next sibling
  Attribute: attrc, Value: attrc
  Element: c, InnerXml:
  cvalue
  <d>dvalue</d>
  ...Moved to first child
  Text: cvalue
  ...Moved to next sibling
  Element: d, InnerXml: dvalue
  ...Moved to first child
  Text: dvalue
  ...Moved to patent
  ...Moved to patent
  ...Moved to next sibling
  Attribute: attre, Value: attre
  Element: e, InnerXml:
  ...Moved to next sibling
  Attribute: attrc, Value: attrc
  Element: f, InnerXml:
  fvalue
  <g><h>hvalue</h>gvalue</g><i>ivalue</i>
  ...Moved to first child
  Text: fvalue
  ...Moved to next sibling
  Element: g, InnerXml: <h>hvalue</h>gvalue
  ...Moved to first child
  Element: h, InnerXml: hvalue
  ...Moved to first child
  Text: hvalue
  ...Moved to patent
  ...Moved to patent
  ...Moved to next sibling
  Element: i, InnerXml: ivalue
  ...Moved to first child
  Text: ivalue
  ...Moved to patent
  ...Moved to patent
  ...Moved to patent
  ...Moved to patent
  ...Moved to patent
  ...Moved to patent
  ...Moved to patent
  ...Moved to patent
  ...Moved to patent
  ...Moved to patent
  ...Moved to patent
  ...Moved to patent
  ...Moved to patent

  
  
  

• Saaketh

  Use XPathNavigator over XPathDocument (read-only XML optimized for XPath/XSLT) or XmlDocument (read-write XML compatible with DOM) whenever possible. Read directly from XmlReader if speed or memory consumption is an issue for you. In the latter case you may avoid caching the whole XML document in memory.
  

• suyang

  Fantastic replies.

  Now I just have to play with it and digest it all.Thanks

  Silly question:

  I dont want to reinvent the wheel but is there a reason why not use the xPathNavigator At glance it looks like it does the job for you.Am I wrong

  thanks again for your replies

  
  
• New to xml and how to read an xml doc advise needed