Question

I have by example following XML:

string xml =
@"<plist version='1.0'>
    <dict>
        <key>DataType</key>
        <string>Employee</string>
        <key>8000</key>
        <dict>
            <key>Id</key>
            <string>8000</string>
            <key>Prename</key>
            <string>Walter</string>
            <key>Name</key>
            <string>Walter Lohner Stans</string>
            <key>Initials</key>
            <string>MAL</string>
        </dict>
        <key>8001</key>
        <dict>
            <key>Id</key>
            <string>8001</string>
            <key>Prename</key>
            <string>Motorrad</string>
            <key>Name</key>
            <string> Meierskappel</string>
            <key>Initials</key>
            <string>MAM</string>
        </dict>
        <key>8004</key>
        <dict>
            <key>Id</key>
            <string>8004</string>
            <key>Prename</key>
            <string>Hanspeter</string>
            <key>Name</key>
            <string>Altenbürger AG  Horgen</string>
            <key>Initials</key>
            <string>FH</string>
        </dict>
    </dict>
</plist>";

I would like to get these 3 Employees as a List…

The Class Employee is also defined:

//Class
public class Employee
{
    //Properties    
    public string Id { get; set; }
    public string Prename { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Initials { get; set; }
}

How does the parsing work now, if I by example want now to pass the xml to a method and want to have a List (of Type Employees) with these 3 Employees?

I started by doing something like that:

public List<Employee> GetEmployees(string xml)
{
    using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(new StringReader(xml)))
    {

    }
}

But Actually I don’t know how to iterate over all these “dicts” which describe one Employee and generally how to deal with.. Help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Use LINQ2XML..It’s COOL

XElement doc=XElement.Parse(".......");

var yourList=doc.Descendants("dict").Descendants("dict").Select(
x=>new Employee
{
Id=x.Elements("string").ElementAt(0).Value,
Prename=x.Elements("string").ElementAt(1).Value,
Name=x.Elements("string").ElementAt(2).Value,
Initials=x.Elements("string").ElementAt(3).Value
}
);