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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-04T16:12:44+00:00

I have an xml Template that I use to store values into a db

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I have an xml Template that I use to store values into a db (via a web-service). I have seen examples of how to update an xml String using linq. For example…

<Contacts>
    <Contact>
        <FirstName>Petar</FirstName>
        <LastName>Petrovic</LastName>
        <Email>p.petar@someemail.com</Email>
        <Address>Pere Perica 10</Address>
        <ZipCode>1000</ZipCode>
        <City>Belgrade</City>
        <State>Serbia</State>
    </Contact>
</Contacts>

If this was an xml doc you wanted to update, You would simply do something 

XElement xmlDoc = new XElement("Contacts", 
                  from c in db.Contacts
                  orderby c.ContactID
                  select new XElement("Contact",
                         new XElement("ContactID", c.ContactID),
                         new XElement("FirstName", c.FirstName),
                         new XElement("LastName", c.LastName)));
xmlDoc.Save(Server.MapPath(@"~/export.xml"));

Which is pretty cool. But I would need to update nodes that are essentially the same except for their attributes. For example…

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<dataTemplateSpecification id="id1" name="name1">
  <description>
    <html>text</html>
  </description>
  <templates>
    <template>
      <elements>
        <element id="element0" name="PatientId" display="Patient ID" dataType="String"  visable="true" readOnly="false">
        </element>
        <element id="element1" name="EMPIID" display="EMPI ID" dataType="String" visable="true" readOnly="true">
        </element>
      </elements>
      <dataTypeSpecifications>
        <dataTypeSpecification id="" baseType="KeyValuePair">
          <dictionaryDefinition>
            <item key="-1" value="-SELECT-" />
            <item key="1" value="YES" />
            <item key="0" value="NO" />
          </dictionaryDefinition>
        </dataTypeSpecification>
      </dataTypeSpecifications>

You see, I have similar nodes that are differentiated by their attributes, namely, the name attributes… as well as the value attributes… How would I use linq to update that? I am thinking I would select a new Xelement using kind of xPath type stuff where i would select the element by the name, and then just set that value? But I am a little confused about how to do that. Any ideas?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    As you suggested you can select an element (attribute) by name, and assign a new value.
    I have altered your first element with this.

            var xml = XElement.Load("XMLFile1.xml");

        var node = xml.Descendants("element").Where(e => e.Attribute("id").Value == "element0").FirstOrDefault();
        if (node != null)
        {
            node.Attribute("name").Value = "something else";
        }
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