asked on

Multiple Namespaces / XPath with C#

Hi Everyone

I was wondering if anyone knew of a good guide to working with multiple
namespaces under .NET? And also help me with my latest poser.

Very basically, I want to be able to do some XPath on XML I am getting
back from a web-service, and I have worked out that I need to apply my
DTDs because there is an xmlns attribute in my root element.

<Root Target="test" Version="2002A"
xmlns="http://www.testurl.com/abc/2002/09">

I have seen how to do this with an XmlNamespaceManager, but when I do
something like:

nsmRequest.AddNamespace("ns1",
"http://localhost/ABC_ReturnAvailRS.xsd");
XmlNode node = xdHotels.SelectSingleNode("//ns1:ABC_ReturnAvailRS.xsd",
nsmRequest);

I just get a null value.

I have 'invented' that prefix because I cannot see a named prefix in my
xsd - but I have also tried String.Empty() and get null back.

The one thing I may be doing wrong is that in my ABC_ReturnAvailRS.xsd
there is:

<xs:include schemaLocation="ABC_CommonTypes.xsd"/>

And in this file there is:

<xs:include schemaLocation="ABC_SimpleTypes.xsd"/>

So does this mean I have to add these to my XmlNamespaceManager
instance? And what do I do about giving each namespace a named
instance?

Hopefully I have made some sense here - and as ever I thank you for
taking the time to cast your eye over this for me.

Many many thanks

Best regards

Darren

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Carl Tawn

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daz_oldham

ASKER

Carl,

You have just dragged me from the depths of despair! Thankyou so so much!!!!!!!!!

Can you reccomend a good resource where I can read up on things like this? I did buy Professional ASP.NET 2.0 XML by Wrox, but it is currently serving as a stand for my monitor - it is the best use of it!

I did modify my code slightly to say:

xdHotels.Schemas.Add(null, oAccom.Config.sXSDLocation + "ABC_AccomAvailRS.xsd");

Is this worth doing, and should I also do it for the other XSD's that this includes as I mentioned in the original post? Also, will doing this automatically check the XML is good, or do I have to call xdHotels.Schemas.Compile?

Again, many thanks

Darren

P.S. I am not sure if you can leave a response if I accept your answer, so I will wait for your reply before I do so.

Many thanks

Darren

Carl Tawn

There are some quick tutorials on XML in .Net here:

http://dotnetjunkies.com/QuickStartv20/howto/doc/Xml/MultipleXmlReader.aspx

There are also some samples on there about validating documents using Schemas and also using Schemas to create XML documents.

In response to your P.S.; It is possible to still post comments to a question that has had an answer accepted and has ben closed.

daz_oldham

ASKER

Thanks again Carl - I wish I was brainy sometimes ;)

If you don't mind me asking one last question, if my XML was:

<ABC_AccomAvailRS Target="test" Version="2002A" xmlns="http://www.testurl.com/abc/2002/09" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<SessionInfo AnotherID="abcde" TextValue="ExpertsExchange"/>
</ABC_AccomAvailRS>

And I want to get the value of the attribute AnotherID, I can get the following to work...

XmlNode node = xdHotels.SelectSingleNode("//ns1:SessionInfo", nsmRequest);
String myString = node.Attributes[0].Value;

However, I would ideally like to do something like:

String myString = node.Attributes["AnotherID"].Value;

This gives me a null exception - why?

Many thanks

Darren

Carl Tawn

You need to use the InnerText property:

string myString = node.Attributes["AnotherID"].InnerText;

daz_oldham

ASKER

Thanks Carl

Was just about to post to say I had got this to work:

xnSession.Attributes["AnotherID"].Value;

But I will keep this in mind for if I get the same problem cropping up.

Do I not have to put "ns1:AnotherID" becaue I have loaded an element into an XmlNode object?

Many thanks - if I had any points left, they'd be yours!

Darren

Carl Tawn

No, namespaces only apply to nodes, not to attributes so you don't need the prefix.

daz_oldham

ASKER

Ah - I see.

Thanks for the help - the past two weeks have been a crash course in me for C#, OOP. XML and XSD. Next is XSLT - not done it for years, so I expect there will be more questions being posted at some point! ;)

Best regards

Darren