Question

I don’t want to hard-code the URI and then have to assign a prefix before I can use an XPath expression to select nodes from the XML document. Is it possible to retrieve this information programmaticaly?

Is this the only way to do it?

string uri = xml.SelectSingleNode("*").Attributes["xmlns"].Value?

Answer 1

The only good alternative I can suggest (assuming you want to select nodes specifically by name) is to use local-name():

XmlNode foundNode = xml.SelectSingleNode("/*[local-name() = 'a']/*[local-name() = 'b']/*[local-name() = 'c']");