Karan's Blog

Parse an XML file

The following code shows a simple method of parsing through an XML file/string. We can get the parent name, child name, attributes etc from the XML. The namespace System.Xml would be the only additional namespace that we would be using.

string myXMl = "<Employees>" +
                 "<Employee ID='1' Name='John Mayer'" +
                      "Address='12th Street'" +
                      "City='New York' Zip='10004'>" +
                 "</Employee>" +
               "</Employees>";

XmlDocument xDoc = new XmlDocument();
xDoc.LoadXml(myXMl);

XmlNodeList xNodeList = xDoc.SelectNodes("Employees/child::node()");
foreach (XmlNode xNode in xNodeList)
{
  if (xNode.Name == "Employee")
  {
    string ID = xNode.Attributes["ID"].Value; //Outputs: 1 
    string Name = xNode.Attributes["Name"].Value;//Outputs: John Mayer 
    string Address = xNode.Attributes["Address"].Value;//Outputs: 12th Street 
    string City = xNode.Attributes["City"].Value;//Outputs: New York 
    string Zip = xNode.Attributes["Zip"].Value; //Outputs: 10004 
  }
}

Lets look at another XML:

string myXMl = "<root>" +
                 "<parent1>..some data</parent1>" +
                 "<parent2>" +
                   "<Child1 id='1' name='Adam'>data1</Child1>" +
                   "<Child2 id='2' name='Stanley'>data2</Child2>" +
                 "</parent2>" +
               "</root>";

XmlDocument xDoc = new XmlDocument();
xDoc.LoadXml(myXMl);
XmlNodeList xNodeList = xDoc.SelectNodes("root/child::node()");

//Traverse the entire XML nodes.
foreach (XmlNode xNode in xNodeList) 
{
    //Looks for any particular nodes
    if (xNode.Name == "parent1") 
    {
        //some traversing....
    }
    if (xNode.Name == "parent2")
    {
        //If the parent node has child nodes then 
        //traverse the child nodes
        foreach (XmlNode xNode1 in xNode.ChildNodes)
        {
           string childNodeName = xNode1.Name;       //Ouputs: Child1
           string childNodeData = xNode1.InnerText; //Outputs: data1

           //Loop through each attribute of the child nodes
           foreach (XmlAttribute xAtt in xNode1.Attributes)
           {
               string attrName = xAtt.Name;   //Outputs: id
               string attrValue = xAtt.Value; //Outputs: 1
           }
        }
    }
}