Find and Replace a text in xml file

[kushaldutt]

Hi all,

I am having trouble finding and replacing text in a xml file. My issue is I have to find a text in a xml file and change it to some other text. But the text in some element tag for ex: 'Name' should not be changed.

So, for example the xml is as shown below and I had to find and replace the text 'Hello' with 'Hi' but with out changing the Name tag.

<Book>
<Name> Hello Book</Name>
<Descr>Hello there </Descr>
<Price>15</Price>
<Author>Hello author </Author>
</Book>

The result should be

<Book>
<Name> Hello Book</Name>
<Descr>Hi there </Descr>
<Price>15</Price>
<Author>Hi author </Author>
</Book>

Can anyone give me some suggestions on how to do it? I have searched so many places but couldn't get any help.


Thanks in advance,
Kushal

[kushaldutt]

I am trying to resolve this issue in c# .Net.

[jkmyoung]

Is there only one exception to the rule or many?
eg are you trying to change all "Hello"s in text, or just the one in //Book/Descr?
Are you changing all "Hello"s but //Book/Name?

It seems you would have to have some sort of DOM model for this. Another possible way would be to use XSLT, and use something like:
if test="contains( Descr, 'Hello')"
replace with substring-before(Descr, 'Hello') + 'Hi' + substring-after(Descr, 'Hello')

I would decide how you are going to do this first.

[kushaldutt]

Is there only one exception to the rule or many?
eg are you trying to change all "Hello"s in text, or just the one in //Book/Descr?
Are you changing all "Hello"s but //Book/Name?

It seems you would have to have some sort of DOM model for this. Another possible way would be to use XSLT, and use something like:
if test="contains( Descr, 'Hello')"
replace with substring-before(Descr, 'Hello') + 'Hi' + substring-after(Descr, 'Hello')

I would decide how you are going to do this first.

I want to change all "Hello"s but //Book/Name. I am planning to use any of the .Net libraries like 'XmlDocument' class or XmlReader class or something like that.

I am planning to do like this

XmlTextReader reader = new XmlTextReader(s FileName);
reader.Whitespa ceHandling = WhitespaceHandl ing.None;
while (reader.Read())
{
switch (reader.NodeTyp e)
{
case System.Xml.XmlN odeType.Element :
{
if (reader.Name.Eq uals("Name"))
{
// Here I dont want to replace the string Hello.

}
else
{
//Replace Hello in this section.
}
}
}


The problem I am facing right now is I am able to change the string using the above approach but I am finding it hard to write it back to the xml file again.
If you feel this approach is not correct, please give me suggestions about other approaches.

I really appreaciate your help.

Thanks,
Kushal

[kushaldutt]

I solved this issue. I parsed XML using DOM tree and replaced the text value.

This tutorial helped me a lot.

http://www.quepublishi ng.com/articles/article.asp?p=2 9800&seqNum=6&r l=1


Thanks for all your help.


Thanks,
Kushal

[jkmyoung]

Another possible way I have seen (but possibly inefficient) is to use a XmlDocument object, eg

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load(sFileN ame)

// get all text nodes
XmlNodeList textNodes = doc.SelectNodes ("//text()");
String find = new String("Hello") ;
String replace = new String("Hi");
int fLength = find.Length();
int index;
for (i = 0; i < textNodes.lengt h; i++){
if (textNodes[i].Parent().Name( ) != "Title") // THE EXCEPTION TO RULE
for (index = textNodes[i].Value.IndexOf( find); index != -1; index = textNodes[i].Value.IndexOf( find))
textNodes[i].Value = textNodes[i].Value.Substrin g(0,index)+ replace + textNodes[i].Value.Substrin g(index+fLength ); //replace each occurrence
}

[kushaldutt]

Another possible way I have seen (but possibly inefficient) is to use a XmlDocument object, eg

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load(sFileN ame)

// get all text nodes
XmlNodeList textNodes = doc.SelectNodes ("//text()");
String find = new String("Hello") ;
String replace = new String("Hi");
int fLength = find.Length();
int index;
for (i = 0; i < textNodes.lengt h; i++){
if (textNodes[i].Parent().Name( ) != "Title") // THE EXCEPTION TO RULE
for (index = textNodes[i].Value.IndexOf( find); index != -1; index = textNodes[i].Value.IndexOf( find))
textNodes[i].Value = textNodes[i].Value.Substrin g(0,index)+ replace + textNodes[i].Value.Substrin g(index+fLength ); //replace each occurrence
}

This also could be the possible solution but we can even do this with out having to have two for loops. Read the text value to a string in the first for loop and then use str.replace method to replace all the occurences of the 'Hello' in the text value of the node. Finally, write the replaced string back to the node by giving textNodes[i].value = newString.

Anyways. Thanks for your help.

[Kasty88]

Hey,

If you were able to find a solution to this, can you please share your script here? URGENT!!

Thanks!!