How can I update/replace an element of an XElement from a string?

Question

So here\'s my case.

I have an XElement, let\'s call it root, which has descendents, which have descendents, etc. I pull a descendent using LINQ to XML, load it into

Answer 1

You could use the XNode.ReplaceWith method:

// input would be your edited XML, this is just sample data to illustrate
string input = @"<Artist Name=""Pink Floyd"">
  <BandMembers>
    <Member>Nick Mason</Member>
    <Member>Syd Barret</Member>
    <Member>David Gilmour</Member>
    <Member>Roger Waters</Member>
    <Member>Richard Wright</Member>
  </BandMembers>
  <Category>Favorite band of all time</Category>
</Artist>";

var replacement = XElement.Parse(input);
var pinkFloyd = xml.Elements("Genre")
                   .Where(e => e.Attribute("Name").Value == "Rock")
                   .Elements("Artist")
                   .Single(e => e.Attribute("Name").Value == "Pink Floyd");

pinkFloyd.ReplaceWith(replacement);
Console.WriteLine(xml);

You should add some error checking though. I used Single since I'm sure the node exists, but if there's a chance it isn't you should use SingleOrDefault and check for null before using the result.

Also, if the input is invalid you'll need to wrap the above code in a try/catch and handle any XmlException that might be thrown.