Question

I want to iterate through all nodes in an XML file and print their names.
What is the best way to do this? I am using .NET 2.0.

Answer 1

I think the fastest and simplest way would be to use an XmlReader, this will not require any recursion and minimal memory foot print.

Here is a simple example, for compactness I just used a simple string of course you can use a stream from a file etc.

  string xml = @"
    <parent>
      <child>
        <nested />
      </child>
      <child>
        <other>
        </other>
      </child>
    </parent>
    ";

  XmlReader rdr = XmlReader.Create(new System.IO.StringReader(xml));
  while (rdr.Read())
  {
    if (rdr.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element)
    {
      Console.WriteLine(rdr.LocalName);
    }
  }

The result of the above will be

parent
child
nested
child
other

A list of all the elements in the XML document.