Question

example

<reference>employee</reference>

<data>123</data>

how to parse using c# so that i should get employee and 123 as output

Answer 1

You can make an XML document out of it, and parse it:

string info = "<reference>employee</reference><data>123</data>";

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.LoadXml("<root>" + info + "</root>");
string reference = doc.DocumentElement.FirstChild.InnerText;
string data = doc.DocumentElement.FirstChild.NextSibling.InnerText;

Another option is to use a regular expression to parse the string:

string info = "<reference>employee</reference><data>123</data>";

MatchCollection m = Regex.Matches(info, "<.+?>(.+?)</.+?>");
string reference = m[0].Groups[1].Value;
string data = m[1].Groups[1].Value;

Or simple string manipulation:

string info = "<reference>employee</reference><data>123</data>";

int start = info.IndexOf("<reference>") + 11;
string reference = info.Substring(start, info.IndexOf('<', start) - start);
start = info.IndexOf("<data>") + 6;
string data = info.Substring(start, info.IndexOf('<', start) - start);