Question

I have an xml file like this:

  <xml>
    <students>
      <person name=jhon/>
      <person name=jack/>
      ...
    </students>
    <teachers>
       <person name="jane" />
       <person name="jane" />
       ...
    </teachers>
  </xml>

If I use this code:

var xml = XDocument.Parse(myxmlstring, LoadOptions.None);
foreach(XElement studentelement in xml.Descendants("person"))
{
    MessageBox.Show(studentelement.Attribute("name").Value);
}

Everything works fine! However, I don’t know if I’m iteratng over the students or the teachers.

But when I try:

var a = xml.Element("students");

a is null!!!

How can I select a specific element in my xml document with c#?

It would be awesome if I could iterate over the students only first, fill some listboxes and the iterate over the teachers and do other stuff. 🙂

The xml file can`t be modified, just in case…

Finally, all I actually want with all of this is to get all the children of a specific element in my file.

Thanks everyone!!!

Answer 1

Element only returns the immediate child node. To recursively browse the xml tree, use Descendants instead.

To successively enumerate the students then the teachers, you could do something like:

var xml = XDocument.Parse(myxmlstring, LoadOptions.None);

var students = xml.Descendants("students");
var teachers = xml.Descendants("teachers");

foreach (var studentElement in students.Descendants("person"))
{
    MessageBox.Show(studentElement.Attribute("name").Value);
}

foreach (var teacherElement in teachers.Descendants("person"))
{
    MessageBox.Show(teacherElement.Attribute("name").Value);
}