Question

I have wrote a c# function in order to parse an XML Stream.
My XML can have several nodes.

Example :

<Stream>
 <One>nnn</One>
 <Two>iii</Two>
 <Three>jjj</Three>
</Stream>

But sometimes, it is :

<Stream>
 <Two>iii</Two>
</Stream>

Here is my c# code :

var XML = from item in XElement.Parse(strXMLStream).Descendants("Stream") select item;
string strOne = string.Empty;
string strTwo = string.Empty;
string strThree =  string.Empty;

if ((item.Element("One").Value != "")
{
   strOne = item.Element("One").Value;
}

if ((item.Element("Two").Value != "")
{
   strTwo = item.Element("Two").Value;
}

if ((item.Element("Three").Value != "")
{
   strThree = item.Element("Three").Value;
}

With this code, if my Stream is full ( Node On, Two and three), there’s no problem! But, if my Stream has only the node “Two”, I get a NullReferenceException.

Is there a way to avoid this exception (I cannot change my Stream).

Thanks a lot 🙂

Answer 1

You should check if item.Element("anything") is null before accessing it’s Value property.

if (item.Element("Three") != null && item.Element("Three").Value != "")