Question

I have a class that parses an XML document in C# using XElement.

I parse the XML for example:

IEnumerable<Element> elements =
    from topLevelElement in XElement.Parse(xml).Elements("topLevel")
    select new Element()
    {
        LongElement = Int64.Parse(topLevelElement.Element("long").Value),
        StringElement = topLevelElement.Element("string").Value,
        DateTimeElement = DateTime.Parse(topLevelElement.Element("datetime").Value)
    };

What would be the best way to assert that the elements were properly parsed? I would like to check if LongElement, StringElement, and DateTimeElement is not null after parsing, but if there is a better way to go about this, I am open to it.

Answer 1

If you are unsure of the values that may be returned by the elements, you should really be using TryParse e.g.

int i = 0;
string s = "3";
if (Int32.TryParse(s, out i))
{
    // Valid integer, now stored in i.
}
else
{
    // Invalid integer.
}

Both your data types DateTime and Int32 have TryParse as an available method. As for a string, you can just do a trivial == null or String.IsNullOrEmpty