Question

I have an XML/Soap file that looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <soap:Body>
    <SendData xmlns="http://stuff.com/stuff">
      <SendDataResult>True</SendDataResult>
    </SendData>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

I want to extract the SendDataResult value but am having difficulty doing so with the following code and various other methods I’ve tried. It always returns null even though there’s a value in the element.

XElement responseXml = XElement.Load(responseOutputFile);
string data = responseXml.Element("SendDataResult").Value;

What needs to be done to extract the SendDataResult element.

Answer 1

You can use Descendants followed by First or Single – currently you’re asking the top level element whether it’s got a SendDataResult element directly beneath it, which it hasn’t. Additionally, you’re not using the right namespace. This should fix it:

XNamespace stuff = "http://stuff.com/stuff";
string data = responseXml.Descendants(stuff + "SendDataResult")
                         .Single()
                         .Value;

Alternatively, navigate directly:

XNamespace stuff = "http://stuff.com/stuff";
XNamespace soap = "http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope";
string data = responseXml.Element(soap + "Body")
                         .Element(stuff + "SendDataResult")
                         .Value;