Question

I have a XML file, that looks like this inside:

<Data>
    <INFO>
        ..
        ...
        <JOB_NAME value="filename.pdf"/>
        <useless_info value="some_info"/>
        <TIMESTAMP value="20120210075304"/>
        <more_useless_info value="012345"/>
        ...
        ..
    </INFO>
    <INFO>
        ..
        ...
        <JOB_NAME value="filename2.pdf"/>
        <useless_info value="some_info"/>
        <TIMESTAMP value="20120210073487"/>
        <more_useless_info value="012345"/>
        ...
        ..
    </INFO>
</Data>

What i want to do, is write specific info to strings, so that later on i can write these to a text file or new XML file.
I found this example here: http://www.csharp-examples.net/xml-nodes-by-name/
And i have this code a little bit working.
Not fully, because it it not getting the values.
my code looks like this:

    XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
    xmlDoc.Load(FileNameTextBox.Text);

    XmlNodeList xnList = xmlDoc.SelectNodes("/Data/INFO");
    foreach (XmlNode xn in xnList)
    {
        string jobName = xn["JOB_NAME"].InnerText;
        string timeStamp = xn["TIMESTAMP"].InnerText;
        MessageBox.Show(timeStamp + jobName);  //for testing

    }

I think this has to do with the fact that the info that i want to get, is not boxed in like <box>info</box>
What i cant find is how i could get the info in my caseout of the xml file now.
Could someone lent me a hand?
thank you!

Answer 1

You need to select the JOB_NAME and TIMESTAMP child nodes of each INFO node, then get their attributes, then get the Value of the “value” attribute.

XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
xmlDoc.Load(FileNameTextBox.Text);

XmlNodeList xnList = xmlDoc.SelectNodes("/Data/INFO");
foreach (XmlNode xn in xnList)
{
    string jobName = xn.SelectSingleNode("JOB_NAME").Attributes["value"].Value;
    string timeStamp = xn.SelectSingleNode("TIMESTAMP").Attributes["value"].Value;
    MessageBox.Show(timeStamp + jobName);  //for testing
}

Be careful with this though as you are likely to get a NullReferenceException if any of the INFO nodes don’t contain both a JOB_NAME and TIMESTAMP Node, and also if either of those do not have an attribute “value”.

To answer your comment below:

string vendorName = xn.SelectSingleNode("JOB_NAME").Attributes["vendor-name"].Value;
string mediaName = xn.SelectSingleNode("JOB_NAME").Attributes["media-name"].Value;