Question

This is the XML I’m trying to parse. I’m having trouble parsing the entry elements and getting the different values within them. Usually I can specify the element that I’m trying to get at and extract the value from it. However, this time the elements I’m targeting all have the same name.

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <response id="-46056350:133f0f5eff1:54e3">
      <userdata>
        <account>
          <account>23408234</account>
        </account>
        <disabled>false</disabled>
        <resetpassword>false</resetpassword>
        <userprofile>
          <entry>
            <name>primaryMiddleInitial</name>
            <value/>
          </entry>
          <entry>
            <name>primaryLastName</name>
            <value>chen</value>
          </entry>
          <entry>
            <name>login_id</name>
            <value>Negative</value>
          </entry>
          <entry>
            <name>zip</name>
            <value/>
          </entry>
          <entry>
            <name>primaryFirstName</name>
            <value>eric</value>
          </entry>
          <entry>
            <name>emailAddress1</name>
            <value>[e-mail]</value>
          </entry>
        </userprofile>
      </userdata>
      <error>Success</error>
    </response>

And this is my attempt at parsing it.

    public static MemberViewModel ParseMemberXML(string xml)
    {
        XDocument data = XDocument.Parse(xml);

        return (from c in data.Descendants("userdata")
                select new MemberViewModel()
                {
                    Account = c.Element("account").Element("account").Value,
                    PrimaryFirstName = c.Element("userprofile").Element("entry").Element("value").Value
                    PrimaryLastName
                    PrimaryMiddleInitial
                    LoginID

                }).ToList().ElementAt(0);
    }

How would I parse this?

Answer 1

Your best bet is to iterate over the “entry” elements and assign their values to fields of the MemberViewModel object as you discover them.

Something like this:

 public static MemberViewModel ParseMemberXML(string xml)
 {
    XDocument data = XDocument.Parse(xml);

    // expecting exactly one
    XElement userdata = data.Root.Element("userdata");

    var obj = new MemberViewModel();
    obj.Account = userdata.Element("account").Element("account").Value;

    foreach (var entry in userdata.Element("userprofile").Elements("entry"))
    {
        switch (entry.Element("name").Value)
        {
            case "primaryFirstName": obj.PrimaryFirstName = entry.Element("value").Value; break;
            case "primaryLastName": obj.PrimaryLastName = entry.Element("value").Value;
    ...etc...
        }
    }

    return obj;
}

You could instead use XPath expressions to select individual elements by specifying their parentage path, but frankly I think the foreach loop is more manageable.