Question

i am trying to parse some xml that i beleve to be malformed using Linq in .net 3.5 , i need to get the data out of the xml and insert the data into variables, i have been using XmlDocument to parse the xml, any examples or assistance is greatly appreciated

XML —

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<centovacast version="2.2.4" host="my.domain.com">
<response type="success">
<message>Complete</message>
<data><row>
<field name="mount">/stream</field>
<field name="listenercount">0</field>
<field name="genre">Unspecified</field>
<field name="url">http://</field>
<field name="title"></field>
<field name="currentsong">Placebo - One Of A Kind</field>
<field name="bitrate">128</field>
<field name="sourceconnected">1</field>
<field name="serverstate">1</field>
<field name="sourcestate">1</field>
<field name="reseller">0</field>
<field name="ipaddress"></field>
<field name="port">13282</field>
<field name="proxy">0</field>
<field name="servertype">ShoutCast</field>
<field name="sourcetype">icescc</field>
</row><row><field></field></row></data></response></centovacast>

---

another problem is that sometimes the “currentsong” value may contain special characters, such as ! , % , ^ & etc and i know that can sometimes cause issues with xml.

— Code i’m trying to use to parse the XML

        XElement xml = XElement.Parse(data);

        var query = from p in xml.Elements("name")
                    select p;

        foreach (var record in query)
        {
            MessageBox.Show(String.Format("Info: {0} {1}",
                                                record.Element("url"),
                                                record.Element("title")));
        }

Answer 1

Linq2Xml code below works with your xml.

var xDoc = XDocument.Parse(xml); //XDocument.Load(filename)

var dict = xDoc.Descendants("field")
               .Where(e=>e.HasAttributes)
               .ToDictionary(e => e.Attribute("name").Value, e => e.Value);

Console.WriteLine(dict["currentsong"]);