Using Linq To XML, method to get path to all leaves?

Question

Ok, I\'ve got the following XML tree

    
        
            1000

        

Answer 1

After parsing the XML to an XDocument, which I assume you've already been able to do, use the methods below. Note that the GetPath() implementation is fairly naiive. See this answer for a better implementation.

public Dictionary<string, string> GetLeaves(XDocument doc)
{
    var dict = doc
        .Descendants()
        .Where(e => !e.HasElements)
        .ToDictionary(e => GetPath(e), e.Value);

    return dict;
}

private string GetPath(XElement element)
{
    var nodes = new List<string>();
    var node = element;
    while (node != null)
    {
        nodes.Add(node.Name.ToString());
        node = node.Parent;
    }

    return string.Join("/", Enumerable.Reverse(nodes));
}

Answer 2

You can find the leaves by looking for elements that have no descendants:

var doc = XDocument.Load(fileName);
var leaves = 
    from e in doc.Descendants()
    where !e.Elements().Any()
    select e;

I don't know if there is a built-in way to get the path of an element, but you can easily create an extension method to build it:

static class Extensions
{
    public static string Path(this XElement element)
    {
        XElement tmp = element;
        string path = string.Empty;
        while (tmp != null)
        {
            path = "/" + tmp.Name + path;
            tmp = tmp.Parent;
        }
        return path;
    }
}

You can then build the dictionary like this:

var dict = leaves.ToDictionary(e => e.Path(), e => e.Value);