Connect to XML file at web address for WP7 app

Question

I\'ve been trying to learn the ins-and-outs of Windows Phone 7 programming over the past few weeks. I have learned most of the basics but I\'ve been having trouble finding a tut

Answer 1

ScottGu created an app which demonstrates what you need. (Code below is very similar as couldn't find link to source from his example.)

The app retrieves XML from a web service (in this case from Twitter.)

    private void GetTweets()
    {
        WebClient twtr = new WebClient();

        twtr.DownloadStringCompleted += new DownloadStringCompletedEventHandler(twitter_DownloadStringCompleted);
        twtr.DownloadStringAsync(new Uri("http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?&q=searchterm"));
    }

It then parses the XML into a collection of object.

    void twitter_DownloadStringCompleted(object sender, DownloadStringCompletedEventArgs e)
    {
        if (e.Error != null)
            return;

        XElement xmlTweets = XElement.Parse(e.Result);

        var list = new List();

        foreach (XElement t in xmlTweets.Elements("{http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom}entry"))
        {
            var userName = t.Element("{http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom}author").Element("{http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom}name").Value.Split(' ')[0];
            var message = t.Element("{http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom}title").Value;
            var imageSource = (from t2 in t.Elements("{http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom}link")
                               where t2.Attribute("type").Value.Contains("image")
                               select t2.Attribute("href").Value).First();

            list.Add(new TweetViewModel
                    {
                        UserName = userName,
                        Message = message,
                        ImageSource = imageSource
                    });
        }

        twitterList.ItemsSource = list;
    }


public class TweetViewModel
{
    public string UserName { get; set; }
    public string Message { get; set; }
    public string ImageSource { get; set; }
}

This is then bound to a list.

It was written with the first CTP of the tools/SDK but hopefully it should still be simple enough to get this working.