Question

I have a snippet of an XML file that looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<ArrayOfCatalogItem xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
    <CatalogItem>
        <ID xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2005/06/30/reporting/reportingservices">bbe9b897-5d3b-4340-914b-fce8d6022bd9</ID>
        <Name xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2005/06/30/reporting/reportingservices">EmployeeReport</Name>
    </CatalogItem>

Now I’m trying to query the file for all the Name elements. I’m aware that I can use the SelectNodes("//Name") to give me what I want. However, since I have namespaces in the <ArrayOfCatalogItem> I have to account for that. So here’s the code I have so far:

System.Xml.XmlDocument doc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
doc.Load(@"C:\CatalogItems.xml");

// Create an XmlNamespaceManager for resolving namespaces
System.Xml.XmlNamespaceManager nsmgr = new System.Xml.XmlNamespaceManager(doc.NameTable);
nsmgr.AddNamespace("xsi", "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance");
nsmgr.AddNamespace("xsd", "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema");

System.Xml.XmlNodeList nodeList;
System.Xml.XmlNode root = doc.DocumentElement;

nodeList = root.SelectNodes("//Name", nsmgr);
Console.WriteLine("There are {0} items.", nodeList.Count);
foreach (System.Xml.XmlNode item in nodeList)
{
    Console.WriteLine(item.InnerText);
}

However, the problem I’m having is the namespace definitions in the <Name> tag. How would I query the document for all Name values taking into account each <Name> has a namespace defined as an attribute?

Answer 1

You’re using the wrong XML namespace – you need to use the one that is applied to the <Name> tag – not the document default namespaces (xsd: and xsi: prefixes).

Try this:

using System.Xml;

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load(@"C:\CatalogItems.xml");

// Create an XmlNamespaceManager for resolving namespaces
XmlNamespaceManager nsmgr = new XmlNamespaceManager(doc.NameTable);
nsmgr.AddNamespace("rs", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2005/06/30/reporting/reportingservices");

XmlNodeList nodeList;
XmlNode root = doc.DocumentElement;

nodeList = root.SelectNodes("//rs:Name", nsmgr);

Console.WriteLine("There are {0} items.", nodeList.Count);

foreach (XmlNode item in nodeList)
{
    Console.WriteLine(item.InnerText);
}