Question

I am trying to convert an XML data into dictionary. I am having problems with identical node names. C# .Net 3.5

Sample XML = the problem is I have no control over this. I just need to process it.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Root>
  <a1>val1</a1>
  <a2>val2</a2>
  <Parameter>
    <ParameterName>param1</ParameterName>
    <ParameterValue>paramval1</ParameterValue>
  </Parameter>
  <Parameter>
    <ParameterName>param2</ParameterName>
    <ParameterValue>paramval2</ParameterValue>
  </Parameter>
</Root>

My attempt:

XMLStream.Position = 0;
        XElement xmlDetails2 = XElement.Load(new System.IO.StreamReader(XMLStream));
        var x = xmlDetails2.Elements().ToDictionary(
            e => e.Name.LocalName,
            e => e.Elements()
                      .ToDictionary(
                          f => f.Name.LocalName,
                          f => f.Value));

Error I am getting (which makes sense of course):

An item with the same key has already been added.

Expected result ( from example xml ) :

a1 => val1
a2 => val2
param1 => paramval1
param2 => paramval2
...

I created my own based on @L.B suggestion. It’s not the best solution but it works for now.

public void XMLTODictionary(XElement xmlDetails, ref Dictionary<string, string> dic)
{
    foreach (var node in xmlDetails.Elements())
    {
        if (node.Name.LocalName.Equals("parameter", StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase))
        {
                dic.Add(node.Element("ParameterName").Value, node.Element("ParameterValue").Value);
        }
        else
        {
            dic.Add(node.Name.LocalName, node.Value);
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

How about using DynamicXml here

dynamic root = DynamicXml.Load("a.xml");

Console.WriteLine(root.a1);
foreach (var p in root.Parameter)
{
    Console.WriteLine("{0}:{1}",p.ParameterName, p.ParameterValue);
}
Console.WriteLine(root.Parameter[0].ParameterValue);

EDIT

A generic approach would be to get a dictionary Dictionary<string,object>
But there are some problems while converting an xml to dictionary. For example

<a1>val1</a1>

dict["a1"] would return val1, but what would this xml return

<a1 name="valAttr"><name>valName</name><a1>

dict["a1"]["name"] ? valAttr or valName?

And considering your example, the only difference between dict["a1"] and dict["Parameter"] is that
Parameter exists more than once under the same parent and it should be thought as an array rather than a
single element.

DynamicXml tries to solve these issues. Of course there
is a lot of room for improvement but It should work for basic needs.