reading value of node that has a specific attribute with Xdocument

Question

Im trying to write a List of 'Documents' from an XML string, but i was wondering what is the best way to get the value of a node of certain attribute.

More specifically in the sample I would like to set the value of aDocument.Source to the text "The Source" of the "field" node that has the "Source" value for the "name" attribute.

Sample XML:

<doc>
      <docitem>3</docitem>
      <docid>129793</docid>
      <doctitle>Some Title</doctitle>
      <docdate>2009-07-03</docdate>
      <metadata>
        <field name="Date">2009-07-03 14:45:00</field>
        <field name="SourceArea">The Source Area</field>
        <field name="Source">The Source</field>
        <field name="Organisation">Some Organisation</field>
      </metadata>
      <summary>
        <summarytext>Some Summary</summarytext>
      </summary>
    </doc>

Sample Code

  protected override List<Document> GetDocuments(string xmlString)
        {
            //Parse the string
            XDocument xDocument = XDocument.Parse(xmlString);

            //Create a List of Document objects, from the doc xml element.
            List<Document> documents = (from doc in xDocument.Descendants("doc")
                                        select new Document
                                        {
                                            DocId = Convert.ToInt32(doc.Element("docid").Value),
                                            DocTitle = doc.Element("doctitle").Value,
                                            DocDateTime = DateTime.Parse(doc.Element("docdate").Value),
                                            DocSummary = doc.Element("summary").Value,
                                            DocBody = "",
                                            DocUrl = doc.Element("docid").Value,
                                            Source = "" //CODE NEEDED
                                        }
                                        ).ToList<Document>();



            return documents;

        }

Arsen Mkrtchyan · Accepted Answer · 2010-02-24 12:10:41Z

2

You can use XPath to XmlDocument

 xmlDocument.SelectSingleNode("doc/metadata/field[@name='Source']").InnerText

Or better you can use Linq to xml, and XPath

XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(/*XML here*/);
doc.XPathSelectElement("doc/metadata/field[@name='Source']").Value

edited Feb 24, 2010 at 12:10

answered Feb 24, 2010 at 12:04

Arsen Mkrtchyan

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2 Comments

Benjamin Ortuzar Over a year ago

I dont seem to find the SelectSingleNode or XPathSelectElement methods in Linq.XElement or Linq.XDocument.

Benjamin Ortuzar Over a year ago

I was missing the System.Xml.XPath namespace. doc.XPathSelectElement("./metadata/field[@name='SOURCE']").Value works.

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