Remove empty/blanks elements in collection of XML nodes

Question

I have an XML document like this:

    
        400
             


        

Answer 1

In VB in case I need to find it again:

doc.Descendants().Where(Function(e) String.IsNullOrEmpty(e.Value)).Remove()

Answer 2

doc.Descendants().Where(e => string.IsNullOrEmpty(e.Value)).Remove(); 

This one line will not throw out empty parent tags that are full of empty children tags. It will just remove their children , which may or may not be appropriate in your situation. It is a really simple change to achieve this you simply have to start removing from the lowest level first. Something like

foreach(XElement child in doc.Descendants().Reverse())
{
    if(!child.HasElements && string.IsNullOrEmpty(child.Value) && !child.HasAttributes) child.Remove();
}

Thanks Nyerguds for the attribute suggestion.

Answer 3

A single one-liner could do the job, no need to iterate over all elements. Here it goes:

doc.Descendants().Where(e => string.IsNullOrEmpty(e.Value)).Remove();

Tester

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Linq;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    public class TestRemove
    {
        public static void Main() {
            Console.WriteLine("----OLD TREE STARTS---");
            XElement doc = XElement.Parse(@"<magento_api>
                                              <data_item>
                                                <code>400</code>
                                                <message>Attribute weight is not applicable for product type Configurable Product</message>
                                              </data_item>
                                              <data_item>
                                                <code>400</code>
                                                <message>Resource data pre-validation error.</message>
                                              </data_item>
                                              <data_item>
                                                <code>1</code>
                                                <message></message>
                                              </data_item>
                                              <data_item>
                                                <code></code>
                                                <message>No code was given</message>
                                              </data_item>
                                        </magento_api>");
            Console.Write(doc.ToString());
            Console.WriteLine("");
            Console.WriteLine("----OLD TREE ENDS---");
            Console.WriteLine("");
            doc.Descendants().Where(e => string.IsNullOrEmpty(e.Value)).Remove();
            Console.WriteLine("----NEW TREE STARTS---");
            Console.Write(doc.ToString());
            Console.WriteLine("");
            Console.WriteLine("----NEW TREE ENDS---");
            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}

And it also could be tested here