Question

I have unusual format of XML as below example

<mainmenu>
    <menu caption="File">
        <menuitem caption="New" tooltip="Create New File" shortcut="Ctrl-N" Action="New">
        <menuitem caption="Open" tooltip="Open Existing File" shortcut="Ctrl-O" Action="Open">
        <menu caption="Import">
            <menuitem caption="As New File" tooltip="Import To New Sheet" shortcut="F11" Action="ImportNew">
            <menuitem caption="As Current File" tooltip="Import To Current Active Sheet" shortcut="F12" Action="ImportOpen">
        </menu>
        <menuitem caption="Exit" tooltip="Exit Program" shortcut="Ctrl-Q" Action="Exit">
    </menu>
    <menu caption="Edit">
        <menuitem caption="Cut" tooltip="" shortcut="Ctrl-C" Action="Cut">
        <menuitem caption="Copy" tooltip="" shortcut="Ctrl-X" Action="Copy">
        <menuitem caption="Paste" tooltip="" shortcut="Ctrl-V" Action="Paste">
    </menu>
</mainmenu>

I need above XML to be parsed into tabular data view with dataset and then can be retrieved from a function, for example:

getData("Edit")

result:

caption tooltip shortcut action
cut     ...
copy    ...
paste   ...

Another example

getData("File.Import")

result:

caption         tooltip shortcut action
as new file     ...
as current file ...

So, what is the best method to parse the XML? Thanks.

Answer 1

Linq to Xml would be a good way to go for this. You can select menu elements based on the criteria, then select a collection of whatever data type you need based on the attributes of the menuitem elements. I wrote out an example below, which implements the simple example getData(“Edit”) and populates a DataTable with the child menu items (in your example, Cut, Copy, Paste).

Dim xdoc As XDocument
Dim filename As string    // TODO set XML filename
Dim name As String
Dim dt as DataTable
xdoc = XDocument.Load(filename)
name = "Edit"
dt = New DataTable()

xdoc.Root.Elements().Where(Function(s) s.Attribute("caption") = name).Elements("menuitem").ToList(). _
    ForEach(dt.Rows.Add(x.Attribute("caption"), x.Attribute("tooltip"), x.Attribute("shortcut"), x.Attribute("action")))

It should be possible to extend this approach to select nested menu items based on “File.Import”, etc, as required.