Parsing a complexly nested XML

Question

I had been reading various tutorials but couldn't figure out to conditionally parse the following XML structure, where user inputs name of a State and then receive the name of the Capitol.

When I test it with the following code, I get no MessageBox popped up.

C# code

XDocument xd = XDocument.Load("Foo.xml");

foreach (var state in xd.Descendants("State"))
{
      Messagebox.Show(state.Attribute("Name").Value);
}

Foo.xml

<Main>
   <Title></Title>
   <Planet Name="Earth">
      <Continent Name="North America">
         <Country Name="USA">
            <State Name="Illinois" Capital="Springfield"></State>
            <State Name="Alabama" Capital="Montgomery"></State>
            ...
         </Country>
         <Country Name="Canada">
            <State Name="Alberta" Capital="Edmonton"></State>
            <State Name="British Columbia" Capital="Victoria"></State>  
            <State Name="Manitoba" Capital="Winnipeg"></State>
            ....
         </Country>
         <Country> ... </Country>
         <Country> ... </Country>
         <Country> ... </Country>
      </Continent>
   </Planet>
</Main>

Will you only have countries that are subdivided into states in your XML? I live in a (small) country that has no states and many address entry forms on the internet asks for my state which I cannot provide. And what do you want to return when different countries have states with the same name? I don't know if two such states exists but before The Soviet Union were split into independent countries Georgia was a state in The Soviet Union so it is possible. — Martin Liversage
– Martin Liversage, Commented Aug 2, 2017 at 8:14

Ben · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-02 08:18:34Z

1

This should work:

List<State> states = (from s in XDocument.Load(@"Foo.xml").Descendants("State")
    select new State
    {
        Name = s.Attribute("Name").Value,
        Capital = s.Attribute("Capital").Value
    }).ToList();

foreach (State state in states)
{
    //do something...
}

//Or get a specific state
var alabama = states.FirstOrDefault(a => a.Name == "Alabama");

answered Aug 2, 2017 at 8:18

Ben

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Comments

Souvik Ghosh · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-02 09:34:10Z

1

I have modified your code a bit. This will return you the capitol from the state.

var stateCapital = from states in XDocument.Load(@"foo.xml").Descendants("State")
                    where states.Attribute("Name").Value == "Alabama"
                    select states.Attribute("Capital").Value;

Messagebox.Show(stateCapital);

If you need the names of all the Capitals for every state in a for loop-

var statesCollection = from states in XDocument.Load(@"foo.xml").Descendants("State") select states;

foreach (var state in statesCollection)
{
    Messagebox.Show(state.Attribute("Capital").Value);
}

edited Aug 2, 2017 at 9:34

answered Aug 2, 2017 at 8:37

Souvik Ghosh

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