Question

I have this XML in a column in my table:

<keywords>   <keyword name='First Name' value='|FIRSTNAME|' display='Jack' />   <keyword name='Last Name' value='|LASTNAME|' display='Jones' />   <keyword name='City' value='|CITY|' display='Anytown' />   <keyword name='State' value='|STATE|' display='MD' /> </keywords> 

I’m getting a record out of that table using LINQ to SQL via this:

GeneratedArticle ga = db.GeneratedArticles.Single(p => p.GeneratedArticleId == generatedArticleId); 

That works, I get my GeneratedArticle object just fine.

I’d like to walk through the data in the ArticleKeywords field, which is XML. I started doing this:

var keywords = from k in ga.ArticleKeywords.Elements('Keywords')                     select k;              foreach (var keyword in keywords)             {              //what goes here?                } 

I’m not 100% sure that I’m getting that data correctly. I need help with the proper syntax to get the value and display out of my XML field.

Answer 1

Here is a sample code:

To read keywords we need to call Elements(‘keyword‘) not Elements(‘keywords‘) since keywords is a root node.

// IEnumerable sequence with keywords data var keywords = from kw in ga.ArticleKeywords.Elements('keyword')                select new {                    Name = (string)kw.Attribute('name'),                    Value = (string)kw.Attribute('value'),                    Display = (string)kw.Attribute('display')                };   foreach (var keyword in keywords) {     var kw = 'Name: ' + keyword.Name +               ' Value: ' + keyword.Value +               ' Display: ' + keyword.Display;     Console.WriteLine(kw); } 

You can get attribute value using foo.Attribute(‘bar’).Value, but this method would throw exception if attribute is missing. Safe way to get attribute value is (string)foo.Attribute(‘bar’) – it will give you null if attribute is missing