Question

Say I have an XmlDocument with the XML:

<office:body>
  <text:p>One</text:p>
  <text:p>two
    <text:span>three
      <text:line-break/>four
      <text:line-break/>five
      <text:line-break/>six
    </text:span>seven
  </text:p>
  <text:p>eight</text:p>
  <table:table>
    <table:table-column>
    <table:table-column>
    <table:table-row>
      <table:table-cell>
        <text:p>
          <text:span>nine</text:span>
        </text:p>
      </table:table-cell>
      <table:table-cell>
        <text:p>
          <text:span>ten</text:span>
        </text:p>
      </table:table-cell>
    </table:table-row>
  </table:table>
</office:body>

How can I extract just the words, one at a time?

Answer 1

You can do it with an XMLReader, like this:

class Program {

    static void Main() {
        XmlReader reader = new XmlTextReader(new StringReader(Xml));
        while (reader.Read()) {
            if (reader.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Text && reader.HasValue) {
                Console.WriteLine(reader.Value.Trim());
            }
        }
    }

    private const string Xml = @"
        <root xmlns:office=""http://office""
            xmlns:text=""http://text""
            xmlns:table=""http://table"">
        <office:body>
          <text:p>One</text:p>
          <text:p>two
            <text:span>three
              <text:line-break/>four
              <text:line-break/>five
              <text:line-break/>six
            </text:span>seven
          </text:p>
          <text:p>eight</text:p>
          <table:table>
            <table:table-column/>
            <table:table-column/>
            <table:table-row>
              <table:table-cell>
                <text:p>
                  <text:span>nine</text:span>
                </text:p>
              </table:table-cell>
              <table:table-cell>
                <text:p>
                  <text:span>ten</text:span>
                </text:p>
              </table:table-cell>
            </table:table-row>
          </table:table>
        </office:body>
        </root>";
}

You need to add a root tag to deal with XML namespaces, and fix the well-formedness error in your XML for this to work.