Question

Hi can anyone help with a linq query, normally I populate my data grid like so from my client side for a GET request to the webservice:

    {
        string uri = "http://localhost:8002/Service/Customer";
        XDocument xDoc = XDocument.Load(uri);
        var customer = xDoc.Descendants("Customer")
            .Select(n => new
            {
                CustomerID = n.Element("CustomerID").Value,
                Firstname = n.Element("FirstName").Value,
                Surname = n.Element("LastName").Value,
                Age = n.Element("Age").Value,
                //Time = DateTime.Parse(n.Element("TimeAdded").Value)
            })
            .ToList();

        dataGrid1.ItemsSource = customer;
    }

Which works fine but now I have linked customers to hire dates and my xml looks like so :

<ArrayOfCustomer>
<Customer>
<CustomerID>1</CustomerID>
<FirstName>G</FirstName>
<LastName>Graam</LastName>
<Age>27</Age>
      <CustomerHireDate>
      <HireDate>
      <HireFromDate>15.07.2012</HireFromDate>
      <HireToDate>29.07.2012</HireToDate>
      </HireDate>
      </CustomerHireDate>
</Customer>
</ArrayOfCustomer>

So far im stuck at the below method of trying to populate a datagrid with descendants of descendants:

            string uriShowCarHires = "http://localhost:8002/Service/Customer/{anything}";
            string Uri = uriShowCarHires.Replace("{anything}", textBox1.Text);
            XDocument xDoc = XDocument.Load(Uri);
            foreach (var node in xDoc.Descendants("Customer"))
            {

              \\..... how do you get the descendants of descendants for each n.element?
            }

Im not sure if this will even populate a datagrid the way im thinking, i was hoping to avoid getting an “array” inside one of the datagrids cells. Im looking for an output abit like this:

Name etc | HireFromDate | HireToDate
G           09.12.2012    01.01.2013

If anyone could help would be grateful thanks

Answer 1

I think you are looking for something like this (it isn’t the most effecient, but it should work):

var customer = xDoc.Descendants("Customer")
        .Select(n => new
        {
            Firstname = n.Element("FirstName").Value,
            Surname = n.Element("LastName").Value,
            HireFromDate = n.Element("CustomerHireDate")
                            .Descendents("HireDate").First()
                            .Descendents("HireFromDate").First().Value,
            HireFromDate = n.Element("CustomerHireDate")
                            .Descendents("HireDate").First()
                            .Descendents("HireToDate").First().Value
        })
        .ToList();