XML Parsing - Read a Simple XML File and Retrieve Values

Question

I ve written a Task Scheduling program for learning purposes  Currently I m saving the scheduled tasks just as plain text and then parsing it using Regex  This looks messy  code wise  and is not very coherent    I would like to load the scheduled tasks from an XML file instead  I ve searched quite a bit to find some solutions but I couldn t get it to work how I wanted    I wrote an XML file structured like this to store my data in    lt Tasks gt       lt Task gt           lt Name gt Shutdown lt  Name gt           lt Location gt C  WINDOWS system32 shutdown exe lt  Location gt           lt Arguments gt -s -f -t 30 lt  Arguments gt           lt RunWhen gt               lt Time gt 8 00 00 a m  lt  Time gt               lt Date gt 18 03 2011 lt  Date gt               lt Days gt                   lt Monday gt false lt  Monday gt                   lt Tuesday gt false lt  Tuesday gt                   lt Wednesday gt false lt  Wednesday gt                   lt Thursday gt false lt  Thursday gt                   lt Friday gt false lt  Friday gt                   lt Saturday gt false lt  Saturday gt                   lt Sunday gt false lt  Sunday gt                   lt Everyday gt true lt  Everyday gt                   lt RunOnce gt false lt  RunOnce gt               lt  Days gt           lt  RunWhen gt           lt Enabled gt true lt  Enabled gt       lt  Task gt   lt  Tasks gt    The way I d like to parse the data is like so         Open Tasks xml    Load the first Task tag    In that task retrieve the values of the Name  Location and Arguments tags    Then open the RunWhen tag and retrieve the values of the Time and Date tags    After that open the Days tag and retrieve the value of each individual tag within    Retrieve the value of Enabled    Load the next task and repeat steps 3 -  7 until all the Task tags in Tasks have been parsed       I m very sure you can do it this way I just can t work it out as there are so many different ways to do things in XML I got a bit overwhelmed  But what I ve go so far is that I would most likely be using XPathDocument and XPathNodeIterator right   If someone can show me an example or explain to me how this would be done I would be very happy

User · Answer

I usually use XmlDocument for this  The interface is pretty straight forward   var doc   new XmlDocument    doc LoadXml xmlString     You can access nodes similar to a dictionary   var tasks   doc  Tasks      and loop over all children of a node

User · Answer

Easy way to parse the xml is to use the LINQ to XML  for example you have the following xml file   lt library gt       lt track id  1  genre  Rap  time  3 24  gt           lt name gt Who We Be RMX  feat  2Pac  lt  name gt           lt artist gt DMX lt  artist gt           lt album gt The Dogz Mixtape  Who s Next   lt  album gt       lt  track gt       lt track id  2  genre  Rap  time  5 06  gt           lt name gt Angel  ft  Regina Bell  lt  name gt           lt artist gt DMX lt  artist gt           lt album gt    And Then There Was X lt  album gt       lt  track gt       lt track id  3  genre  Break Beat  time  6 16  gt           lt name gt Dreaming Your Dreams lt  name gt           lt artist gt Hybrid lt  artist gt           lt album gt Wide Angle lt  album gt       lt  track gt       lt track id  4  genre  Break Beat  time  9 38  gt           lt name gt Finished Symphony lt  name gt           lt artist gt Hybrid lt  artist gt           lt album gt Wide Angle lt  album gt       lt  track gt   lt library gt    For reading this file  you can use the following code   public void Read string  fileName        XDocument doc   XDocument Load fileName        foreach  XElement el in doc Root Elements                  Console WriteLine   0   1    el Name  el Attribute  id   Value           Console WriteLine    Attributes             foreach  XAttribute attr in el Attributes                Console WriteLine       0    attr           Console WriteLine    Elements              foreach  XElement element in el Elements                Console WriteLine       0    1    element Name  element Value

User · Answer

class Program        static void Main string   args                   Load XML from local         string sourceFileName             string element string Empty          var FolderPath   D  Test RenameFileWithXmlAttribute                string   files   Directory GetFiles FolderPath     xml                foreach  string xmlfile in files                                try                                       sourceFileName   xmlfile                      XElement xele   XElement Load sourceFileName                       string convertToString   xele ToString                        XElement parseXML   XElement Parse convertToString                       element   parseXML Descendants  Meta   Where x   gt   string x Attribute  name       XMLTAG   Last   Value                      DirectoryInfo CurrentDate   Directory CreateDirectory DateTime Now ToString  yyyy-MM-dd                         string saveWithThisName  Path Combine CurrentDate FullName  element                       File Copy sourceFileName  saveWithThisName true                                                           catch Exception ex

User · Answer

Try XmlSerialization  try this    Serializable  public class Task       public string Name get  set       public string Location  get  set       public string Arguments  get  set       public DateTime RunWhen  get  set      public void WriteXMl Task task        XmlSerializer serializer      serializer   new XmlSerializer typeof Task         MemoryStream stream   new MemoryStream         StreamWriter writer   new StreamWriter stream  Encoding Unicode       serializer Serialize writer  task        int count    int stream Length        byte   arr   new byte count        stream Seek 0  SeekOrigin Begin         stream Read arr  0  count         using  BinaryWriter binWriter new BinaryWriter File Open   C  Temp Task xml   FileMode Create                    binWriter Write arr               public Task GetTask           StreamReader stream   new StreamReader   C  Temp Task xml   Encoding Unicode        return  Task serializer Deserialize stream

User · Answer

Are you familiar with the DataSet class   The DataSet can also load XML documents and you may find it easier to iterate   http   msdn microsoft com en-us library system data dataset readxml aspx  DataSet dt   new DataSet    dt ReadXml   c  test xml

[c#] XML Parsing - Read a Simple XML File and Retrieve Values

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