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Asked: 2026-05-11T21:35:26+00:00

I have the following set of data <ids> <id1 attr1=value1 attr2=value2 /> <id2 attr3=value3

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I have the following set of data

<ids>
   <id1 attr1="value1" attr2="value2" />
   <id2 attr3="value3" attr4="value4" />
   <id3 attr2="value6" attr5="value7" />
</ids>

Basically, it’s an XML that can have any node name with any attribute name with any attribute value.

After parsing the XML, I store the attribute data in a Dictionary.
Then I store that same Dictionary as a value with the node name as a key.
So my data structure would be a Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, string>> (let’s give this a variable name called “dict”)
So if I wanted to get the value for attr2 in the id1 node, I would do:

string value = dict["id1"]["attr2"];
// value will be value2

I think this is a pretty simple and workable solution for my needs, but there just seems to be this voice at the back of my head telling me that there is a different data structure or simpler solution that I’m missing out on. What does everyone think?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I think your solution is a good one. It will provide very fast lookups, and matches exactly to your domain.

    Is your main problem with the nested dictionaries? If so, I would suggest that you not worry about it – using collections of collections is often a very useful tool.

    My only complaint would be this: If you’re not using this frequently, you’re going to be loading a lot of information into a data structure that may be unncessary. If this is for one time lookups, leaving it in XML and using XPath queries may be a more optimal solution than pre-parsing and loading the entire thing into memory. If you’re querying this frequently, though, this is a more optimal solution.

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