Question

I’m trying to extract some data from XML using Linq to XML, and I have the following code:

            commisionPct = XDocument.Parse(commissionXml)
                                    .Descendants("Range")
                                    .Attributes("commission")
                                    .Select(x => Convert.ToDecimal(x.Value))
                                    .FirstOrDefault();

The problem is I do not want it to exception if x.Value is not a decimal. Normally I’d use decimal.TryParse but I am not sure of a clean way to do this inside of a linq statement. I guess I could surround this with a try/catch block but I was curious if there was a better way to do this inside of Linq.

I would prefer it to return the decimal default value (0) if it’s not a decimal.

Answer 1

Change your Select like this:

//Linq
.Select(
    x =>
    {
         Decimal d;
         Decimal.TryParse(x.Value, out d);
         return d;
    })
.FirstOrDefault();

Or, create a method to handle it for you.

//Linq
.Select(x => DecimalTryParseOrZero(x.Value))
.FirstOrDefault();

Decimal DecimalTryParseOrZero(String input)
{
    Decimal d;
    Decimal.TryParse(x.Value, out d);
    return d;
}