Question

I have the following code to get some data about companies:

XDocument doc = XDocument.Load(new StringReader(searchPayload));
XNamespace ns = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["WebServiceNamespace"];

var businesses = (from node in doc.Descendants(ns + "searchResultsRecord")
                  let ABN = node.Element(ns + "ABN")
                  let mainName = node.Element(ns + "mainName")
                  let legalName = node.Element(ns + "legalName")
                  let mainTradingName = node.Element(ns + "mainTradingName")
                  let otherTradingName = node.Element(ns + "otherTradingName")
                  let mainBusinessPhysicalAddress = node.Element(ns + "mainBusinessPhysicalAddress")
                  select new
                  {
                      Name = new
                      { 
                          organisationName = (string)mainTradingName.Element(ns + "organisationName"),
                          score = (string)mainTradingName.Element(ns + "score"),
                          isCurrentIndicator = (string)mainTradingName.Element(ns + "isCurrentIndicator"),
                      },
                      ABN = new
                      {
                          identifierValue = (string)ABN.Element(ns + "identifierValue"),
                          identifierStatus = (string)ABN.Element(ns + "identifierStatus"),
                      },
                      Location = new
                      {
                          stateCode = (string)mainBusinessPhysicalAddress.Element(ns + "stateCode"),
                          postCode = (string)mainBusinessPhysicalAddress.Element(ns + "postcode"),
                          isCurrentIndicator = (string)mainBusinessPhysicalAddress.Element(ns + "isCurrentIndicator"),
                      }
                  }).ToList();

searchPayload is a SOAP message returned from a web service and it returnes up to 200 searchResultRecords of which some of them have a mainName node, some legalNode, some all of the nodes and so on. If I use the code above I get the error in the topic because obviously not all result records have all nodes so how can I handle this?

In Name = new I want to get available “name” nodes

Thanks

Answer 1

I can’t see anything in the lets that would through, since node should always be non-null. And outside the lets the only time you use it is in blah.Element(..) – so you have two choices:

• filter out the ones that won’t work (will remove data):

  ....
  let mainTradingName = node.Element(ns + "mainTradingName")
  where mainTradingName != null
  ....
  

• check before using .Element (will default some fields to blank):

  ...
  organisationName = mainTradingName == null ? "" :
        (string)mainTradingName.Element(ns + "organisationName"),
  ...