Question

I have an XML file as follows:

I uploaded the XML file : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10773282/2011/result.xml . It’s a machine generated XML, so you might need some XML viewer/editor.

I use this C# code to get the elements in CoverageDSPriv/Module/*.

using System;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Linq;

namespace HIR {
  class Dummy {

    static void Main(String[] argv) {

      XDocument doc = XDocument.Load("result.xml");

      var coveragePriv = doc.Descendants("CoverageDSPriv"); //.First();
      var cons = coveragePriv.Elements("Module");

      foreach (var con in cons)
      {
        var id = con.Value;
        Console.WriteLine(id);
      }
    }
  }
}

Running the code, I get this result.

hello.exe6144008016161810hello.exehello.exehello.exe81061hello.exehello.exe!17main_main40030170170010180180011190190012200200013hello.exe!107testfunctiontestfunction(int)40131505001460600158080216120120017140140018AA

I expect to get

hello.exe
61440
...

However, I get just one line of long string.

• Q1 : What might be wrong?
• Q2 : How to get the # of elements in cons? I tried cons.Count, but it doesn’t work.

• Q3 : If I need to get nested value of <CoverageDSPriv><Module><ModuleNmae> I use this code :

  var coveragePriv = doc.Descendants(“CoverageDSPriv”); //.First();
  var cons = coveragePriv.Elements(“Module”).Elements(“ModuleName”);

I can live with this, but if the elements are deeply nested, I might be wanting to have direct way to get the elements. Are there any other ways to do that?

ADDED

var cons = coveragePriv.Elements("Module").Elements();

solves this issue, but for the NamespaceTable, it again prints out all the elements in one line.

hello.exe
61440
0
8
0
1
6
1
61810hello.exehello.exehello.exe81061hello.exehello.exe!17main_main40030170170010180180011190190012200200013hello.exe!107testfunctiontestfunction(int)40131505001460600158080216120120017140140018

Or, Linq to XML can be a better solution, as this post.

Answer 1

It looks to me like you only have one element named Module — so .Value is simply returning you the InnerText of that entire element. Were you intending this instead?

coveragePriv.Element("Module").Elements();

This would return all the child elements of the Module element, which seems to be what your’e after.

Update:

<NamespaceTable> is a child of <Module> but you appear to want to handle it similarly to <Module> in that you want to write out each child element. Thus, one brute-force approach would be to add another loop for <NamespaceTable>:

foreach (var con in cons)
{
    if (con.Name == "NamespaceTable") 
    {
        foreach (var nsElement in con.Elements()) 
        {
            var nsId = nsElement.Value;
            Console.WriteLine(nsId);
        }
    }
    else
    {
        var id = con.Value;
        Console.WriteLine(id);
    }
}

Alternatively, perhaps you’d rather just denormalize them altogether via .Descendents():

var cons = coveragePriv.Element("Module").Descendents();

foreach (var con in cons)
{
    var id = con.Value;
    Console.WriteLine(id);
}