Question

Been working a lot with Google Checkout and the responses are always huge amount of XML data. What i want is to parse out the node called merchant-private-data from this rubble.

It might not always be present and it might be on several positions (with the same value).

I tried a simple approach but that did not yield any results.

From the sandbox response:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<authorization-amount-notification xmlns="http://checkout.google.com/schema/2" serial-number="123456789">
    <authorization-amount currency="USD">11.65</authorization-amount>
    <authorization-expiration-date>2012-08-21T12:30:16.000Z</authorization-expiration-date>
    <avs-response>Y</avs-response>
    <cvn-response>U</cvn-response>
    ...
    <order-summary>
        ...
        <shopping-cart>
        ...
            <merchant-private-data>
                <MERCHANT_DATA_HIDDEN>50c77071-aeea-40fe-962b-f4d51d1f9b0</MERCHANT_DATA_HIDDEN>
            </merchant-private-data>
        ...
        </shopping-cart>
        ...
    </order-summary>
</authorization-amount-notification>

Might be in more locations and might not always be in that location.

My idea was this, but it did not work (yields 0 results even though i can see the node in the xml):

XDocument input = XDocument.Parse(xmldata);
string privateData = null;
var privateDataNode = (from nodes in input.Descendants("merchant-private-data") select nodes).FirstOrDefault();
if (privateDataNode != null && privateDataNode.HasElements && privateDataNode.Element("MERCHANT_DATA_HIDDEN") != null)
       privateData = privateDataNode.Element("MERCHANT_DATA_HIDDEN").Value;

Answer 1

You’re missing namespace, try it like this:

        XDocument input = XDocument.Parse(xmldata);
        XNamespace ns = input.Root.Name.Namespace;

        string privateData = null;
        var privateDataNode = (from nodes in input.Descendants(ns + "merchant-private-data") select nodes).FirstOrDefault();
        if (privateDataNode != null && privateDataNode.HasElements && privateDataNode.Element(ns + "MERCHANT_DATA_HIDDEN") != null)
            privateData = privateDataNode.Element(ns + "MERCHANT_DATA_HIDDEN").Value;