Question

I have:
An XML with some elements.
A sub-element that may or may not be defined inside this XML.
Need to extract the value of the sub-element when it does exist.

How do I get the value without throwing object-reference errors?

For example:

 string sampleXML = "<Root><Tag1>tag1value</Tag1></Root>"; 

//Pass in <Tag2> and the code works: 
//string sampleXML = "<Root><Tag1>tag1value</Tag1><Tag2>tag2Value</Tag2></Root>";    
 XDocument sampleDoc = XDocument.Parse(sampleXML);

//Below code is in another method, the 'sampleDoc' is passed in. I am hoping to change only this code
XElement sampleEl = sampleDoc.Root; 
string tag1 = String.IsNullOrEmpty(sampleEl.Element("Tag1").Value) ? "" : sampleEl.Element("Tag1").Value;

//NullReferenceException:
//Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
string tag2 = String.IsNullOrEmpty(sampleEl.Element("Tag2").Value) ? "" : sampleEl.Element("Tag2").Value;

Answer 1

First you should check if the document is null, remember you are accessing the .Value and this will throw a null reference exception so before you apply .value do a test:

if (sampleEl != null)
  //now apply .value

Or ternary:

string tag2 = sampleEl.Element("Tag2") != null ? sampleEL.Element("Tag2").Value : String.Empty

Your code then becomes:

 string sampleXML = "<Root><Tag1>tag1value</Tag1></Root>"; 

    //Pass in <Tag2> and the code works: 
    //string sampleXML = "<Root><Tag1>tag1value</Tag1><Tag2>tag2Value</Tag2></Root>";    
     XDocument sampleDoc = XDocument.Parse(sampleXML);

    //Below code is in another method, the 'sampleDoc' is passed in. I am hoping to change only this code
    XElement sampleEl = sampleDoc.Root; 
    string tag1 = sampleEl.Element("Tag1") != null ? sampleEl.Element("Tag1").Value : String.Empty;

    //NullReferenceException:
    //Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
string tag2 = sampleEl.Element("Tag2") != null ? sampleEL.Element("Tag2").Value : String.Empty