Good way to read this XML

[Ben Amada]

Hi! I'm not yet that familliar with the Xml namespace, but have been
fooling around with GetElementsByTagName, ChildNodes and InnerText. I'm
wondering how others would approach extracting values out of this XML (see
below).

Basically, I need to extract all of the <code> values below as well as the
<status>, <transaction-id> and <time-stamp> values.

It seems to me that the most intuitive way of accomplishing this is by being
able to specify the path to each value I'm interested in. Something like
(warning: this is made up):

xmlDoc.Elements("message/record/vin/code").Value
xmlDoc.Elements("message/record/bill/address_current/code").Value

Is there a way to access the XML document this way?? If not, any other
suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
Ben

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<message>
<status>0</status>
<record>
<transaction-id>11</transaction-id>
<time-stamp>11/13/04 1:10 pm</time-stamp>
<vin>
<code>1</code>
<text>positive</text>
</vin>
<phone>
<code>1</code>
<text>positive</text>
</phone>
<bill>
<code>1</code>
<text>positive</text>
<address_current>
<code>1</code>
<text>positive</text>
</address_current>
</bill>
</record>
</message>

[Martin Honnen]

Ben Amada wrote:

It seems to me that the most intuitive way of accomplishing this is by being
able to specify the path to each value I'm interested in. Something like
(warning: this is made up):

xmlDoc.Elements("message/record/vin/code").Value
xmlDoc.Elements("message/record/bill/address_current/code").Value

Is there a way to access the XML document this way?? If not, any other

What you have is an XPath expression and .NET allows you indeed to
select nodes with such an XPath expression. If all you want to do is
extracting data from an XML document then you can create an
XPathNavigator over an XPathDocument. Here is a C# snippet:

using System;
using System.Xml.XPath;

public class Test2004111401 {
public static void Main (string[] args) {
XPathDocument xmlDocument = new XPathDocument(@"test2004111401.xml");
XPathNavigator xpathNavigator = xmlDocument.CreateNavigator();

XPathNodeIterator nodeIterator =
xpathNavigator.Select(@"message/record/vin/code");
while (nodeIterator.MoveNext()) {
Console.WriteLine("vin code: {0}", nodeIterator.Current.Value);
}

nodeIterator =
xpathNavigator.Select(@"message/record/bill/address_current/code");
while (nodeIterator.MoveNext()) {
Console.WriteLine("adress_current code: {0}",
nodeIterator.Current.Value);
}
}
}
--

Martin Honnen
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/

[Ben Amada]

Martin Honnen wrote:

What you have is an XPath expression and .NET allows you indeed to
select nodes with such an XPath expression. If all you want to do is
extracting data from an XML document then you can create an
XPathNavigator over an XPathDocument. Here is a C# snippet:

using System;
using System.Xml.XPath;

public class Test2004111401 {
public static void Main (string[] args) {
XPathDocument xmlDocument = new XPathDocument(@"test2004111401.xml");
XPathNavigator xpathNavigator = xmlDocument.CreateNavigator();

XPathNodeIterator nodeIterator =
xpathNavigator.Select(@"message/record/vin/code");
while (nodeIterator.MoveNext()) {
Console.WriteLine("vin code: {0}", nodeIterator.Current.Value);
}

nodeIterator =
xpathNavigator.Select(@"message/record/bill/address_current/code");
while (nodeIterator.MoveNext()) {
Console.WriteLine("adress_current code: {0}",
nodeIterator.Current.Value);
}
}
}

Hi Martin,

Great, your example has been extremely helpful! XPathNavigator works a lot
better than what I was trying to do with GetElementsByTagName, ChildNodes,
etc.

Thanks again!
Ben