Question

I am having to write a XPath Query to pull out the answer for a question based on the question id. The question id is passed dynamically to the query. I cannot use LINQ as the solution is in NET 2.0. Please find the XML file below

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Questionaire>
  <question id="1">
    <answer>1</answer>
    <correctAnswer>Text</correctAnswer>
  </question>
  <question id="2">
    <answer>2</answer>
    <correctAnswer>Text</correctAnswer>
  </question>
</Questionaire>

I’am a novice to XPath and find it hard to get my head around it.

Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Your XPath expression can be dynamically generated like this:

myExpression = string.Format("/*/*[id='{0}']/answer", theId);

then, depending on the object representing the XML document you need to call one of the following methods: Select(), SelectNodes(), SelectSingleNode(), Evaluate().

Read the MSDN documentation about the appropriate methods of XmlDocument, XPathDocument, XPathNavigator and XPathExpression.