XmlDocument GetElementsByTagName within a specified block in C#

Question

I have an xml file and currently I am getting element-by-tag-name. What I am trying to achieve is to specify which block to use, such as bookstore or shop. Thank you for any help and advice.

XML:

<VariablesSpecs name="Data01">
  <bookstore>
    <book genre='novel' ISBN='10-861003-324'>
      <title>The Handmaid's Tale</title>
      <price>19.95</price>
    </book>
  </bookstore>
  <shop>
    <book genre='novel' ISBN='10-861003-324'>
      <title>The Handmaid's Tale</title>
      <price>19.95</price>
    </book>
  </shop>
</VariablesSpecs>

Code:

var doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load("data.xml");

var bookNodes = doc.GetElementsByTagName("book");
foreach (var bookNode in bookNodes)
{
    // Collect data.
}

Solution 1

You are not using Linq to XML:

var doc = XDocument.Load("data.xml");

var bookNodes = doc.Descendants("book").Where(b=> b.Parent.Name == "shop");

using regular System.Xml:

var doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load("data.xml");
var bookNodes = doc.SelectNodes(@"//bookstore/book");
foreach (XmlNode item in bookNodes)
{
    string title = item.SelectSingleNode("./title").InnerText;
    string price = item.SelectSingleNode("./price").InnerText;
    Console.WriteLine("title {0} price: {1}",title,price); //just for demo
}

Solution 2

You can use XDocument class following way:

XDocument Doc = XDocument.Load("data.xml");
// getting child elements of bookstore
var result = from d in Doc.Descendants("bookstore").Descendants("book")
             select new 
             {
               Name = d.Element("title").Value,
               Price = d.Element("price").Value
             };

// getting child elements of shop
var result = from d in Doc.Descendants("shop").Descendants("book")
             select new 
             {
               Name = d.Element("title").Value,
               Price = d.Element("price").Value
             };

Comments

[Doro]

I know but would be nice also to have smt with LinqToXml. But, what about smt without linq?

[Doro]

Thank you, and without linq using XmlDocument?

[Doro]

How can i implement with the foreach loop?

[Ehsan Sajjad]

i always prefer to use XDocument because it is easy to traverse the document

[Florian Schmidinger]

@doro if you also need attributes: string isbn = item.Attributes.GetNamedItem("ISBN").Value; string isbnusingxpath = item.SelectSingleNode("./@ISBN").InnerText;