Question

I have an XML feed (which I don’t control) and I am trying to figure out how to detect the volume of certain attribute values within the document.

I am also parsing the XML and separating attributes into Arrays (for other functionality)

Here is a sample of my XML

<items> <item att1='ABC123' att2='uID' /> <item att1='ABC345' att2='uID' /> <item att1='ABC123' att2='uID' /> <item att1='ABC678' att2='uID' /> <item att1='ABC123' att2='uID' /> <item att1='XYZ123' att2='uID' /> <item att1='XYZ345' att2='uID' /> <item att1='XYZ678' att2='uID' /> </items> 

I want to find the volume nodes based on each att1 value. Att1 value will change. Once I know the frequency of att1 values I need to pull the att2 value of that node.

I need to find the TOP 4 items and pull the values of their attributes.

All of this needs to be done in C# code behind.

If I was using Javascript I would create an associative array and have att1 be the key and the frequency be the value. But since I’m new to c# I don’t know how to duplicate this in c#.

So I believe, first I need to find all unique att1 values in the XML. I can do this using:

IEnumerable<string> uItems = uItemsArray.Distinct(); // Where uItemsArray is a collection of all the att1 values in an array 

Then I get stuck on how I compare each unique att1 value to the whole document to get the volume stored in a variable or array or whatever data set.

Here is the snippet I ended up using:

        XDocument doc = XDocument.Load(@'temp/salesData.xml');         var topItems = from item in doc.Descendants('item')                     select new                     {                         name = (string)item.Attribute('name'),                         sku = (string)item.Attribute('sku'),                         iCat = (string)item.Attribute('iCat'),                         sTime = (string)item.Attribute('sTime'),                         price = (string)item.Attribute('price'),                         desc = (string)item.Attribute('desc')                      } into node                     group node by node.sku into grp                     select new {                          sku = grp.Key,                         name = grp.ElementAt(0).name,                         iCat = grp.ElementAt(0).iCat,                         sTime = grp.ElementAt(0).sTime,                         price = grp.ElementAt(0).price,                         desc = grp.ElementAt(0).desc,                         Count = grp.Count()                      };          _topSellers = new SalesDataObject[4];         int topSellerIndex = 0;         foreach (var item in topItems.OrderByDescending(x => x.Count).Take(4))         {             SalesDataObject topSeller = new SalesDataObject();             topSeller.iCat = item.iCat;             topSeller.iName = item.name;             topSeller.iSku = item.sku;             topSeller.sTime = Convert.ToDateTime(item.sTime);             topSeller.iDesc = item.desc;             topSeller.iPrice = item.price;             _topSellers.SetValue(topSeller, topSellerIndex);             topSellerIndex++;         }  

Thanks for all your help!

Answer 1

If you have the values, you should be able to use LINQ’s GroupBy…

        XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(xml);         var query = from item in doc.Descendants('item')                     select new                     {                         att1 = (string)item.Attribute('att1'),                         att2 = (string)item.Attribute('att2') // if needed                     } into node                     group node by node.att1 into grp                     select new { att1 = grp.Key, Count = grp.Count() };          foreach (var item in query.OrderByDescending(x=>x.Count).Take(4))         {             Console.WriteLine('{0} = {1}', item.att1, item.Count);         }