How does one parse XML files

Question

Is there a simple method of parsing XML files in C   If so  what

User · Answer

Use a good XSD Schema to create a set of classes with xsd.exe and use an XmlSerializer to create a object tree out of your XML and vice versa. If you have few restrictions on your model, you could even try to create a direct mapping between you model classes and the XML with the Xml*Attributes.

There is an introductory article about XML Serialisation on MSDN.

Performance tip: Constructing an XmlSerializer is expensive. Keep a reference to your XmlSerializer instance if you intend to parse/write multiple XML files.

User · Answer

It s very simple  I know these are standard methods  but you can create your own library to deal with that much better   Here are some examples   XmlDocument xmlDoc  new XmlDocument       Create an XML document object xmlDoc Load  yourXMLFile xml       Load the XML document from the specified file     Get elements XmlNodeList girlAddress   xmlDoc GetElementsByTagName  gAddress    XmlNodeList girlAge   xmlDoc GetElementsByTagName  gAge     XmlNodeList girlCellPhoneNumber   xmlDoc GetElementsByTagName  gPhone        Display the results Console WriteLine  Address      girlAddress 0  InnerText   Console WriteLine  Age      girlAge 0  InnerText   Console WriteLine  Phone Number      girlCellPhoneNumber 0  InnerText     Also  there are some other methods to work with  For example  here  And I think there is no one best method to do this  you always need to choose it by yourself  what is most suitable for you

User · Answer

Use XmlTextReader  XmlReader  XmlNodeReader and the System Xml XPath namespace  And  XPathNavigator  XPathDocument  XPathExpression  XPathnodeIterator    Usually XPath makes reading XML easier  which is what you might be looking for

User · Answer

I have just recently been required to work on an application which involved the parsing of an XML document and I agree with Jon Galloway that the LINQ to XML based approach is  in my opinion  the best  I did however have to dig a little to find usable examples  so without further ado  here are a few   Any comments welcome as this code works but may not be perfect and I would like to learn more about parsing XML for this project   public void ParseXML string filePath               create document instance using XML file path     XDocument doc   XDocument Load filePath           get the namespace to that within of the XML  xmlns            XElement root   doc Root      XNamespace ns   root GetDefaultNamespace            obtain a list of elements with specific tag     IEnumerable lt XElement gt  elements   from c in doc Descendants ns    exampleTagName   select c          obtain a single element with specific tag  first instance   useful if only expecting one instance of the tag in the target doc     XElement element    from c in doc Descendants ns    exampleTagName  select c  First            obtain an element from within an element  same as from doc     XElement embeddedElement    from c in element Descendants ns    exampleEmbeddedTagName  select c  First            obtain an attribute from an element     XAttribute attribute   element Attribute  exampleAttributeName        With these functions I was able to parse any element and any attribute from an XML file no problem at all

User · Answer

If you re using  NET 2 0  try XmlReader and its subclasses XmlTextReader  and XmlValidatingReader  They provide a fast  lightweight  memory usage  etc    forward-only way to parse an XML file   If you need XPath capabilities  try the XPathNavigator  If you need the entire document in memory try XmlDocument

User · Answer

You can use ExtendedXmlSerializer to serialize and deserialize   Instalation You can install ExtendedXmlSerializer from nuget or run the following command   Install-Package ExtendedXmlSerializer   Serialization   ExtendedXmlSerializer serializer   new ExtendedXmlSerializer    var obj   new Message    var xml   serializer Serialize obj     Deserialization  var obj2   serializer Deserialize lt Message gt  xml     Standard XML Serializer in  NET is very limited    Does not support serialization of class with circular reference or class with interface property  Does not support Dictionaries  There is no mechanism for reading the old version of XML  If you want create custom serializer  your class must inherit from IXmlSerializable  This means that your class will not be a POCO class  Does not support IoC    ExtendedXmlSerializer can do this and much more   ExtendedXmlSerializer support  NET 4 5 or higher and  NET Core  You can integrate it with WebApi and AspCore

User · Answer

If you re processing a large amount of data  many megabytes  then you want to be using XmlReader to stream parse the XML   Anything else  XPathNavigator  XElement  XmlDocument and even XmlSerializer if you keep the full generated object graph  will result in high memory usage and also a very slow load time   Of course  if you need all the data in memory anyway  then you may not have much choice

User · Answer

You can parse the XML using this library System Xml Linq  Below is the sample code I used to parse a XML file   public CatSubCatList GenerateCategoryListFromProductFeedXML         string path   System Web HttpContext Current Server MapPath  xmlFilePath        XDocument xDoc   XDocument Load path        XElement xElement   XElement Parse xDoc ToString           List lt Category gt  lstCategory   xElement Elements  Product   Select d   gt  new Category               Code   Convert ToString d Element  CategoryCode   Value           CategoryPath   d Element  CategoryPath   Value          Name   GetCateOrSubCategory d Element  CategoryPath   Value  0      Category         SubCategoryName   GetCateOrSubCategory d Element  CategoryPath   Value  1     Sub Category        GroupBy x   gt  new   x Code  x SubCategoryName    Select x   gt  x First    ToList         CatSubCatList catSubCatList   GetFinalCategoryListFromXML lstCategory        return catSubCatList

User · Answer

You can use XmlDocument and for manipulating or retrieve data from attributes you can Linq to XML classes

User · Answer

I d use LINQ to XML if you re in  NET 3 5 or higher

User · Answer

In Addition you can use XPath selector in the following way  easy way to select specific nodes    XmlDocument doc   new XmlDocument    doc Load  test xml     var found   doc DocumentElement SelectNodes    book  title  Barry Poter         select all Book elements in whole dom  with attribute title with value  Barry Poter      Retrieve your data here or change XML here  foreach  XmlNode book in nodeList      book InnerText  The story began as it was         Console WriteLine  Display XML     doc Save Console Out     the documentation

User · Answer

I m not sure whether  best practice for parsing XML  exists  There are numerous technologies suited for different situations  Which way to use depends on the concrete scenario   You can go with LINQ nbsp to nbsp XML  XmlReader  XPathNavigator or even regular expressions  If you elaborate your needs  I can try to give some suggestions

[c#] How does one parse XML files?

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