Question

I am using LINQ to convert from XML file to a class that I have created. no matter what I am trying I am getting 0 in the count of the list.

List<UpdateMember> updateMembers = new List<ExeTeam.UpdateMember>();
updateMembers = GetMember(doc);
try
{
  IEnumerable<UpdateMember> member = from r in doc.Descendants("UpdateMember").Descendants("member")
  select new UpdateMember()
  {
    Birthdate = (string)(r.Element("Birthdate")) == string.Empty ? DateTimeParser((DateTime)(r.Element("Birthdate"))) : DateTime.Now,
    Email = (string)r.Element("Email") != null ? (string)r.Element("Email") : "",
    FamilyStatus = (string)r.Element("Familystatus") != null ? (string)r.Element("Familystatus") : "",
    ID = (int)r.Element("IdNumber") != 0 ? (int)r.Element("IdNumber") : 0,
    Phone1 = (int)r.Element("Telephone1") != 0 ? (int)r.Element("Telephone1") : 0,
    Phone2 = (int)r.Element("Telephone2") != 0 ? (int)r.Element("Telephone2") : 0,
    phone3 = (int)r.Element("Telephone3") != 0 ? (int)r.Element("Telephone3") : 0
  };
  return member.ToList();
}

The xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
  <UpdateMember xmlns="http://tempuri.org/">
    <member>
      <Birthdate>25122012</Birthdate>
      <Email>[e-mail]</Email>
      <Familystatus>single</Familystatus>
      <IdNumber>12345678</IdNumber>
      <Telephone1>123-4567890</Telephone1>
      <Telephone2></Telephone2>
      <Telephone3></Telephone3>
    </member>
  </UpdateMember>

In the line from r in doc.Decendants("")...
I have tried all kind of variations.
Thank to all

Answer 1

The problem is namespaces:

<UpdateMember xmlns="http://tempuri.org/">

That means all your elements are in that namespace, by default. Your queries all try to look for elements which aren’t in a namespace, e.g.

Element("Familystatus")

This is very easy to fix in LINQ to XML:

XNamespace ns = "http://tempuri.org/";
IEnumerable<UpdateMember> member = from r in doc.Descendants(ns + "UpdateMember")
                                                .Descendants(ns + "member")
// etc

Additionally, your attempt to handle missing data won’t work and is overly complicated. For example, this:

Phone1 = (int)r.Element("Telephone1") != 0 ? (int)r.Element("Telephone1") : 0

should be:

Phone1 = (int?) r.Element(ns + "Telephone1") ?? 0

If you cast to int, it won’t give a value of 0 if the value is missing – it will throw an exception. Casting to int? will give a null value instead.

I would change your whole code to:

return doc.Descendants(ns + "UpdateMember").Descendants(ns + "member")
          .Select (r => new UpdateMember
          {
              // Really? This is an odd default.
              Birthdate = (DateTime?) r.Element(ns + "Birthdate") ?? DateTime.Now,
              Email = (string) r.Element(ns + "Email") ?? "",
              FamilyStatus = (string) r.Element(ns + "Familystatus) ?? "",
              ID = (int?) r.Element(ns + "IDNumber") ?? 0,
              Phone1 = (int?) r.Element(ns + "Telephone1") ?? 0,
              Phone2 = (int?) r.Element(ns + "Telephone2") ?? 0,
              Phone3 = (int?) r.Element(ns + "Telephone3") ?? 0)
          })
          .ToList();

EDIT: As noted in comments, storing phone numbers as int values is a really bad idea. You’d lose any formatting, you’d lose leading zeroes, and I’d expect many full phone numbers to be outside the range of an int anyway. I’d keep them as strings.