asked on

Reading XML parent and children

I have parent and child nodes as below. I want to retrieve the parent description, then traverse and read the child names.

So I could possibly have the below printout when done with 3 parents, with 1-3 children each as shown below (there can be X children):
Description1 - Child Name1
Description1 - Child Name2
Description2 - Child Name1
Description3 - Child Name1
Description3 - Child Name2
Description3 - Child Name3

                <parent>
                  <description>Test1</description>
                  <children>
                    <child>
                      <name>Joe</name>
                    </child>
                    <child>
                      <name>Jane</name>
                    </child>
                  </children>
                </parent> 
                <parent>
                  <description>Test2</description>
                  <children>
                    <child>
                      <name>Joe2</name>
                    </child>
                    <child>
                      <name>Jane2</name>
                    </child>
                  </children>
                </parent>

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I'm starting out with something like below, but once I hit the child within the child node (children/child) I don't know how to access and loop through all the children:

 XmlDocument xmlResults = new XmlDocument();
xmlResults.LoadXml(xmlString);

XmlNodeList nodes = xmlResults.GetElementsByTagName("parent");
if (nodes != null)
 {

       foreach (XmlNode node in nodes)
       {
             string description = node["description"].InnerText;
             string name = node["name"].InnerText;
       }
}

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Thanks!

Alfredo Luis Torres Serrano

http://www.tizag.com/xmlTutorial/xmlchild.php

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xpath.xpathnavigator.aspx

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/52079/Using-XPathNavigator-in-C

Miguel Oz

Replace lines 8-12 with code below:
foreach (XmlNode node in nodes)
{
string description = node["description"].InnerText;
if (!node.HasChildNodes)
{
//Print description alone
continue;
}
XmlNodeList childNodes = xmlResults.GetElementsByTagName("child");
foreach (XmlNode childNode in childNodes)
{
string name = childNode["name"].InnerText;
//Print description and names
}
}

Note: You can use xpath to get the child node if you like

Starr Duskk

ASKER

mas,

I tried using xpath, and couldn't get it to ever work.

How would I do an xpath with this structure?

thanks.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Miguel Oz

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Starr Duskk

ASKER

>>XmlNodeList childNodes = node.GetElementsByTagName("child");

Just fyi, it says on this line that GetElementsByTagName doesn't have a definition in System.Xml.XmlNode

I'm going to try the Xpath now.

Thanks!

Starr Duskk

ASKER

It kind of works.

But it is returning me every single child in the entire file with every parent.

Like:
parent:Test
Joe
Jane
Joe2
Jane2

parent:Test2
Joe
Jane
Joe2
Jane2

Joe and Jane belong with the first one and Joe2 and Jane2 belong with the second one, but on every loop it returns all children in the original xml, not just in the selected node.

Weird.

Any ideas?

thanks.

Starr Duskk

ASKER

Oh well. Guess I'll close this. Going a different route.