Using LINQ to parse XML into Dictionary

Question

I have a configuration file such as:

Answer 1

Your call to ToDictionary needs a key and value selector. Starting with that you have, it can be

var dictionary = yourQuery.ToDictionary(item => item.Name, item => item.Value);

Answer 2

To give a more detailed answer - you can use ToDictionary exactly as you wrote in your question. In the missing part, you need to specify "key selector" and "value selector" these are two functions that tell the ToDictionary method which part of the object that you're converting is a key and which is a value. You already extracted these two into an anonymous type, so you can write:

var configDictionary = 
 (from configDatum in xmlDocument.Descendants("Config")
  select new {
    Name = configDatum.Attribute("name").Value,
    Value = configDatum.Attribute("value").Value,
  }).ToDictionary(o => o.Name, o => o.Value);

Note that I removed the generic type parameter specification. The C# compiler figures that automatically (and we're using an overload with three generic arguments). However, you can avoid using anonymous type - in the version above, you just create it to temporary store the value. The simplest version would be just:

var configDictionary = 
  xmlDocument.Descendants("Config").ToDictionary(
    datum => datum.Attribute("name").Value,
    datum => datum.Attribute("value").Value );

Answer 3

It isn't necessary to have the query as you're just doing a projection. Move the projection into the call to ToDictionary():

var configDictionary = xmlDocument.Descendants("Config")
                                  .ToDictionary(e => e.Attribute("name").Value,
                                                e => e.Attribute("value").Value);