Question

I’ve been using a try/catch statement to run through whether or not an element exists when I parse through it. Obviously this isn’t the best way of doing it. I’ve been using LINQ (lambda expressions) for the majority of my parsing, but I just don’t know how to detect if an element is there or not.

One big problem with some solutions I found is that they take 3-4 times more code than using the try/catch block, which kind of defeats the purpose.

I would assume the code would look something like this:

if(document.Element("myElement").Exists())
{
   var myValue = document.Element("myElement").Value;
}

I did find this link, but the looping is unecessary in my case as I can guarantee that it will only show up once if it exists. Plus the fact of having to create a dummy element which seems unecessary as well. Doesn’t seem like it’s the best way (or a good way) of checking. Any ideas?

Answer 1

XElement e = document.Element("myElement");
if (e != null)
{
    var myValue = e.Value; 
}

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.linq.xcontainer.element.aspx

“Gets the first (in document order) child element with the specified XName.”

“Returns Nothing if there is no element with the specified name.”