Reading XML File Through LINQ: A Few Tips

In this articlet I will discuss how to read XML files using LINQ. We will see some tips as well.

Let us say we have a XML file as below; the file is stored on the D drive. The XML file contains information about books.

Data.Xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<catalog>
  <books>
<book id="bk101"> 
  <author id="1">Gambardella, Matthew</author>
  <title>XML Developer's Guide</title>
  <genre>Computer</genre>
  <price>44.95</price>
  <publish_date>2000-10-01</publish_date>
   <description> An in-depth look at creating applications with XML.</description>
</book>
<book id="bk102">
  <author id="2">Ralls, Kim</author>
  <title>Midnight Rain</title>
  <genre>Fantasy</genre>
  <price>5.95</price>
  <publish_date>2000-12-16</publish_date>
  <description> A former architect battles corporate zombies,an evil sorceress, and her own childhood to become
queen of the world.</description>
</book>
<book id="bk103">
  <author id="3">Corets, Eva</author>
  <title>Maeve Ascendant</title>
  <genre>Fantasy</genre>
    <price>5.95</price>
    <publish_date>2000-11-17</publish_date>
    <description>After the collapse of a nanotechnology society in England, the young survivors lay the foundation for
a new society. </description>
  </book>
 
<book id="bk104">
    <author id="4">Corets, Eva</author>
    <title>Oberon's Legacy</title>
    <genre>Fantasy</genre>
    <price>5.95</price>
    <publish_date>2001-03-10</publish_date>
    <description>In post-apocalypse England, the mysterious agent known only as Oberon helps to create a new life for
 the inhabitants of London. Sequel to Maeve Ascendant.</description>
 
  </book>
 
<book id="bk105">
    <author id="5">Corets, Eva</author>
    <title>The Sundered Grail</title>
    <genre>Fantasy</genre>
    <price>5.95</price>
    <publish_date>2001-09-10</publish_date>
    <description>The two daughters of Maeve, half-sisters, battle one another for control of England. Sequel to
Oberon's Legacy.</description>
 
  </book>
  </books>
</catalog>

Fetching all the Books

To fetch all the books, we just need to parse the XML file. Find the descendants book and fetch it into an anonymous class.



Fetching a Particular Book

If you want to fetch a particular book, we need to apply a where condition while parsing the XML file.




Fetching the Attribute Value of a particular Book

Imagine you need to fetch the author Id of the book with Id bk102. To do that you need to select as below:



Fetching all the Authors Name only

To fetch the entire author name, we need to execute the following query.



For your reference thefull source code is as below:

Program.cs

using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Xml.Linq;

namespace ConsoleApplication23
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            XDocument document = XDocument.Load("D:\\Data.xml");
            #region Fetch All the Books 
            var books = from r in document.Descendants("book")
                        select new
                            {
                                Author = r.Element("author").Value,
                                Title = r.Element("title").Value,
                                Genere = r.Element("genre").Value,
                                Price = r.Element("price").Value,
                                PublishDate = r.Element("publish_date").Value,
                                Description = r.Element("description").Value,
 
                            };
 
            foreach (var r in books)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(r.PublishDate + r.Title + r.Author);
            }
 
            Console.ReadKey(true);
            #endregion 
 
            #region Fetching a particular  Book            
            var selectedBook = from r in document.Descendants("book").Where
                                   (r=>(string)r.Attribute("id")=="bk102")
                        select new
                        {
                            Author = r.Element("author").Value,
                            Title = r.Element("title").Value,
                            Genere = r.Element("genre").Value,
                            Price = r.Element("price").Value,
                            PublishDate = r.Element("publish_date").Value,
                            Description = r.Element("description").Value,
 
                        };
 
            foreach (var r in selectedBook)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(r.PublishDate + r.Title + r.Author);
            }
            Console.ReadKey(true);
            #endregion 
 
          
 
            #region Fetching a particular  Book
 
          
            var selectedBookAttribute = (from r in document.Descendants("book").Where
                                        (r => (string)r.Attribute("id") == "bk102")
                                        select r.Element("author").Attribute("id").Value).FirstOrDefault();
            
            Console.WriteLine(selectedBookAttribute);         
                        
            Console.ReadKey(true);                                  
 
            #endregion
 
 
            #region Fetching all Authors 
 
           
            var allauthors = from r in document.Descendants("book")
                                         select r.Element("author").Value; 
            foreach(var r in allauthors)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(r.ToString());
            }
           
 
            Console.ReadKey(true);
 
            #endregion
 
 
     
 
        }
    }
}

Output



I hope this article was useful. Thanks for reading.