How does one parse XML files? [closed]

Answer 1

In Addition you can use XPath selector in the following way (easy way to select specific nodes):

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load("test.xml");

var found = doc.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("//book[@title='Barry Poter']"); // select all Book elements in whole dom, with attribute title with value 'Barry Poter'

// Retrieve your data here or change XML here:
foreach (XmlNode book in nodeList)
{
  book.InnerText="The story began as it was...";
}

Console.WriteLine("Display XML:");
doc.Save(Console.Out);

the documentation

Answer 2

I'm not sure whether "best practice for parsing XML" exists. There are numerous technologies suited for different situations. Which way to use depends on the concrete scenario.

You can go with LINQ to XML, XmlReader, XPathNavigator or even regular expressions. If you elaborate your needs, I can try to give some suggestions.

Answer 3

If you're processing a large amount of data (many megabytes) then you want to be using XmlReader to stream parse the XML.

Anything else (XPathNavigator, XElement, XmlDocument and even XmlSerializer if you keep the full generated object graph) will result in high memory usage and also a very slow load time.

Of course, if you need all the data in memory anyway, then you may not have much choice.

Answer 4

It's very simple. I know these are standard methods, but you can create your own library to deal with that much better.

Here are some examples:

XmlDocument xmlDoc= new XmlDocument(); // Create an XML document object
xmlDoc.Load("yourXMLFile.xml"); // Load the XML document from the specified file

// Get elements
XmlNodeList girlAddress = xmlDoc.GetElementsByTagName("gAddress");
XmlNodeList girlAge = xmlDoc.GetElementsByTagName("gAge"); 
XmlNodeList girlCellPhoneNumber = xmlDoc.GetElementsByTagName("gPhone");

// Display the results
Console.WriteLine("Address: " + girlAddress[0].InnerText);
Console.WriteLine("Age: " + girlAge[0].InnerText);
Console.WriteLine("Phone Number: " + girlCellPhoneNumber[0].InnerText);

Also, there are some other methods to work with. For example, here. And I think there is no one best method to do this; you always need to choose it by yourself, what is most suitable for you.

Answer 5

Use XmlTextReader, XmlReader, XmlNodeReader and the System.Xml.XPath namespace. And (XPathNavigator, XPathDocument, XPathExpression, XPathnodeIterator).

Usually XPath makes reading XML easier, which is what you might be looking for.

Answer 6

You can use ExtendedXmlSerializer to serialize and deserialize.

Instalation You can install ExtendedXmlSerializer from nuget or run the following command:

Install-Package ExtendedXmlSerializer

Serialization:

ExtendedXmlSerializer serializer = new ExtendedXmlSerializer();
var obj = new Message();
var xml = serializer.Serialize(obj);

Deserialization

var obj2 = serializer.Deserialize<Message>(xml);

Standard XML Serializer in .NET is very limited.

• Does not support serialization of class with circular reference or class with interface property,
• Does not support Dictionaries,
• There is no mechanism for reading the old version of XML,
• If you want create custom serializer, your class must inherit from IXmlSerializable. This means that your class will not be a POCO class,
• Does not support IoC.

ExtendedXmlSerializer can do this and much more.

ExtendedXmlSerializer support .NET 4.5 or higher and .NET Core. You can integrate it with WebApi and AspCore.