Question

I have some wonky XML I’m trying to read values from.

<text>
  <term>a</term>
  <line>
    <elm>data here</elm>
  </line>
  <term>b</term>
  <line>
    <elm>data here</elm>
  </line>
  <term>c</term>
  <line>
    <elm>data here</elm>
  </line>
</text>

I only have access to the the 3 line elements at this point.

As I loop over each line, for the first line I want to find the element term that happens to have “a” as a value since it’s the “closest” to the first line child.

Same thing for the second line except I want to find the closest term element, which in this case is “b”

How can I accomplish this reliably using LINQ?

Answer 1

If the term element always exactly precedes the line element, you can use

XElement.ElementsBeforeSelf().Last()

So

var element = XElement.Load(@"previous-sibling.xml");
var termsQuery =
            from line in element.Descendants("line")
            select new
            {
                Elm = line.Descendants("elm").FirstOrDefault().Value,
                Term = line.ElementsBeforeSelf().LastOrDefault().Value
            };