Question

I’ve got an XML file where a part of it are the GoodsItems element. I want to order the GoodsItem elements so that the ones having a subelement SupplementaryInformationLines.SupplementaryInformationLine with Code == "X002" and Text != "NLR" comes first. Subsequently all elements must be ordered by the GoodsItem.TaricCode element.

<GoodsItems>
  <GoodsItem>
    <GoodsDescription1>Some goods to be sorted last</GoodsDescription1>
    <TaricNumber>854129</TaricNumber>
    <SupplementaryInformationLines>
      <SupplementaryInformationLine>
        <Type>B.H</Type>
        <Code>X002</Code>
        <Text>NLR</Text>
      </SupplementaryInformationLine>
      <SupplementaryInformationLine>
        <Type>SU</Type>
        <Code></Code>
        <Text>Some text</Text>
      </SupplementaryInformationLine>
    </SupplementaryInformationLines>
  </GoodsItem>
  <GoodsItem>
    <GoodsDescription1>Some goods to be sorted first</GoodsDescription1>
    <TaricNumber>854129</TaricNumber>
    <SupplementaryInformationLines>
      <SupplementaryInformationLine>
        <Type>B.H</Type>
        <Code>X002</Code>
        <Text>SE_A_4324234</Text>
      </SupplementaryInformationLine>
      <SupplementaryInformationLine>
        <Type>SU</Type>
        <Code></Code>
        <Text>Some text</Text>
      </SupplementaryInformationLine>
    </SupplementaryInformationLines>
  </GoodsItem>
</GoodsItems>

I tested it and got it to work correctly with the first part of the ordering, then I added the TaricNumber ordering and changed from using .Value to get the string values of the elements in the where clause to casting to string instead since some files got a NullPointerException when using .Value. After these changes I cannot get it to work again. It only orders the GoodsItems by TaricNumber.

var query = from xeGoodsItem in xeCustClearance.Element(nsName + "GoodsItems").Elements(nsName + "GoodsItem")
    let sortValue1 = (
        from xeSuppInfo in xeGoodsItem.Element(nsName + "SupplementaryInformationLines").Elements(nsName + "SupplementaryInformationLine")
        where ((string)xeSuppInfo.Element("Code") == "X002" && (string)xeSuppInfo.Element("Text") != "NLR")
        select 1).FirstOrDefault()
    orderby sortValue1 descending, (string)xeGoodsItem.Element(nsName + "TaricNumber").Value ascending
    select xeGoodsItem;

I don’t need to save the XML file with the ordering, I’m only doing the sort in-memory. Although using a ReplaceNode approach instead of a linq query could be a solution as well, I just need to get this thing to work.

Answer 1

Answered in my comment. It was a missing namespace name in front of the element name causing the ordering to not work as expected.