Walking an XML tree in C#

Question

I\'m new to .net and c#, so I want to make sure i\'m using the right tool for the job.

The XML i\'m receiving is a description of a directory tree on another machine, so

Answer 1

I would use the XLINQ classes in System.Xml.Linq (this is the namespace and the assembly you will need to reference). Load the XML into and XDocument:

XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(someString);

Next you can either use recursion or a pseudo-recursion loop to iterate over the child nodes. You can choose you child nodes like:

//if Directory is tag name of Directory XML
//Note: Root is just the root XElement of the document
var directoryElements = doc.Root.Elements("Directory"); 

//you get the idea
var fileElements = doc.Root.Elements("File"); 

The variables directoryElements and fileElements will be IEnumerable types, which means you can use something like a foreach to loop through all of the elements. One way to build up you elements would be something like this:

List files = new List();

foreach(XElelement fileElement in fileElements)
{
  files.Add(new MyFileType()
    {     
      Prop1 = fileElement.Element("Prop1"), //assumes properties are elements
      Prop2 = fileElement.Element("Prop2"),
    });
}

In the example, MyFileType is a type you created to represent files. This is a bit of a brute-force attack, but it will get the job done.

If you want to use XPath you will need to using System.Xml.XPath.

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A Note on System.Xml vs System.Xml.Linq

There are a number of XML classes that have been in .Net since the 1.0 days. These live (mostly) in System.Xml. In .Net 3.5, a wonderful, new set of XML classes were released under System.Xml.Linq. I cannot over-emphasize how much nicer they are to work with than the old classes in System.Xml. I would highly recommend them to any .Net programmer and especially someone just getting into .Net/C#.