I think the fastest and simplest way would be to use an XmlReader, this will not require any recursion and minimal memory foot print.
Here is a simple example, for compactness I just used a simple string of course you can use a stream from a file etc.
string xml = @"
<parent>
<child>
<nested />
</child>
<child>
<other>
</other>
</child>
</parent>
";
XmlReader rdr = XmlReader.Create(new System.IO.StringReader(xml));
while (rdr.Read())
{
if (rdr.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element)
{
Console.WriteLine(rdr.LocalName);
}
}
The result of the above will be
parent
child
nested
child
other
A list of all the elements in the XML document.
To iterate through all elements
XDocument xdoc = XDocument.Load("input.xml");
foreach (XElement element in xdoc.Descendants())
{
Console.WriteLine(element.Name);
}
You can use XmlDocument. Also some XPath can be useful.
Just a simple example
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load("sample.xml");
XmlElement root = doc.DocumentElement;
XmlNodeList nodes = root.SelectNodes("some_node"); // You can also use XPath here
foreach (XmlNode node in nodes)
{
// use node variable here for your beeds
}
A recursive algorithm that parses through an XmlDocument
Here is an example - Recursively reading an xml document and using regex to get contents
Here is another recursive example - http://www.java2s.com/Tutorial/CSharp/0540__XML/LoopThroughXmlDocumentRecursively.html
This is what I quickly wrote for myself:
public static class XmlDocumentExtensions
{
public static void IterateThroughAllNodes(
this XmlDocument doc,
Action<XmlNode> elementVisitor)
{
if (doc != null && elementVisitor != null)
{
foreach (XmlNode node in doc.ChildNodes)
{
doIterateNode(node, elementVisitor);
}
}
}
private static void doIterateNode(
XmlNode node,
Action<XmlNode> elementVisitor)
{
elementVisitor(node);
foreach (XmlNode childNode in node.ChildNodes)
{
doIterateNode(childNode, elementVisitor);
}
}
}
To use it, I've used something like:
var doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load(somePath);
doc.IterateThroughAllNodes(
delegate(XmlNode node)
{
// ...Do something with the node...
});
Maybe it helps someone out there.
Source: Stackoverflow.com