Using XPath to read xml

Question

I have this XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<bookstore>
  <book id="ISBN-NUMBER">
    <title>
      The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
    </title>
    <author type="major">
      <first-name>
        Benjamin
      </first-name>
      <last-name>
        Franklin
      </last-name>
    </author>
    <price>
      8.99
    </price>
  </book>
  <book id="ISBN-NUMBER">
    <title>
      The Confidence Man
    </title>
    <author type="major">
      <first-name>
        Herman
      </first-name>
      <last-name>
        Melville
      </last-name>
    </author>
    <price>
      11.99
    </price>
  </book>
  <book id="ISBN-NUMBER">
    <title>
      The Gorgias
    </title>
    <author type="major">
      <name>
        Plato
      </name>
    </author>
    <price>
      9.99
    </price>
  </book>
</bookstore>

How do i read it with XPath? I've used:

XPathDocument doc = new XPathDocument(stream);
XPathNavigator nav = doc.CreateNavigator();
XPathNodeIterator node = nav.Select("bookstore/book");

while (node.MoveNext())

but how do i move on from here? i guess i need a swtich statement to swtich if node is title, author, and price. if book then i need to read books id, same with author and type.

During waiting for an answer accept some answers on previous questions — rene
– rene, Commented Feb 15, 2012 at 12:31
It looks like you read this example - support.microsoft.com/kb/308333; it explains how to get down the the book nodes, but not how to select the child attributes - the example msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/… contains this info. — dash
– dash, Commented Feb 15, 2012 at 12:58
You have forgotten to tell us the most important: What is your task? Which exactly nodes of the XML document do you want to select? Please, edit the question and add this missing, important information. — Dimitre Novatchev
– Dimitre Novatchev, Commented Feb 15, 2012 at 13:45

marc_s · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-15 12:36:49Z

2

You can use node.Select('//title') to get the title, I suppose. I'm not sure how this works in C#, but common xpaths are as follows

//bokstore/book selects book nodes.
//bookstore/book/title selects the title node
//bookstore/book[n]/* selects all the all the child nodes of nth node.

edited Feb 15, 2012 at 12:36

marc_s

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answered Feb 15, 2012 at 12:33

SoWhat

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