asked on

xml node

In c#, how to read all child, not one by one?

string xmlString = "<people><firstname>John</firstname><lastname>John</lastname></people>";            

            XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
            xmlDoc.LoadXml(xmlString);
            foreach (XmlNode node in xmlDoc.SelectNodes("//people"))
            {
                //how to loop and read all child?
            }

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ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Misha

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Bill Prew

Not sure I understand, if you don't want to get them one by one, what format do you want the "all at once" result returned in?

Typically any result of gathering matches from XML will yield a collection that then can be iterated over, do you not want to do that? And if so, what format do you want all the matches to be in?

»bp

ste5an

First of all: when using XPath, then avoid the // syntax, cause it is much slower then the exact XPath /People.

Reading every node is pretty simple using XmlDocument:

namespace ConsoleCS
{
    using System;
    using System.Xml;

    public class Program
    {
        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string xmlString = "<people><firstname>John</firstname><lastname>NotJohn</lastname></people>";
            XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
            xmlDoc.LoadXml(xmlString);
            foreach (XmlNode node in xmlDoc.SelectNodes("/people"))
            {
                Console.WriteLine(node.SelectSingleNode("firstname").InnerText);
                Console.WriteLine(node.SelectSingleNode("lastname").InnerText);
            }

            Console.WriteLine("\nDone.");
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}

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Using XDocument instead of XmlDocument is in many cases simpler as already shown by Misha.

But I prefer normally strong types using deserialization:

namespace ConsoleCS
{
    using System;
    using System.IO;
    using System.Xml;
    using System.Xml.Serialization;

    [XmlRoot("people")]
    public class People
    {
        [XmlElement("firstname")]
        public string FirstName { get; set; }
        [XmlElement("lastname")]
        public string LastName { get; set; }
        public override string ToString()
        {
            return string.Format($"{LastName}, {FirstName}");
        }
    }

    public class Program
    {
        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string xmlString = "<people><firstname>John</firstname><lastname>NotJohn</lastname></people>";

            People people;
            XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(People));
            using (TextReader reader = new StringReader(xmlString))
            {
                people = (People)serializer.Deserialize(reader);
            }

            Console.WriteLine(people);

            Console.WriteLine("\nDone.");
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}

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But the questions on my side is similar to Bill's: What is your goal here?