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How do I read xml in C#? [duplicate]

How can I read an XML attribute using C#'s XmlDocument?
I have an XML file which looks somewhat like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<MyConfiguration xmlns="http://tempuri.org/myOwnSchema.xsd" SuperNumber="1" SuperString="whipcream">
<Other stuff />
</MyConfiguration>
How would I read the XML attributes SuperNumber and SuperString?
Currently I'm using XmlDocument, and I get the values in between using XmlDocument's GetElementsByTagName() and that works really well. I just can't figure out how to get the attributes?

XmlNodeList elemList = doc.GetElementsByTagName(...);
for (int i = 0; i < elemList.Count; i++)
{
string attrVal = elemList[i].Attributes["SuperString"].Value;
}

You should look into XPath. Once you start using it, you'll find its a lot more efficient and easier to code than iterating through lists. It also lets you directly get the things you want.
Then the code would be something similar to
string attrVal = doc.SelectSingleNode("/MyConfiguration/#SuperNumber").Value;
Note that XPath 3.0 became a W3C Recommendation on April 8, 2014.

You can migrate to XDocument instead of XmlDocument and then use Linq if you prefer that syntax. Something like:
var q = (from myConfig in xDoc.Elements("MyConfiguration")
select myConfig.Attribute("SuperString").Value)
.First();

I have an Xml File books.xml
<ParameterDBConfig>
<ID Definition="1" />
</ParameterDBConfig>
Program:
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load("D:/siva/books.xml");
XmlNodeList elemList = doc.GetElementsByTagName("ID");
for (int i = 0; i < elemList.Count; i++)
{
string attrVal = elemList[i].Attributes["Definition"].Value;
}
Now, attrVal has the value of ID.

XmlDocument.Attributes perhaps? (Which has a method GetNamedItem that will presumably do what you want, although I've always just iterated the attribute collection)

Assuming your example document is in the string variable doc
> XDocument.Parse(doc).Root.Attribute("SuperNumber")
1

If your XML contains namespaces, then you can do the following in order to obtain the value of an attribute:
var xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
// content is your XML as string
xmlDoc.LoadXml(content);
XmlNamespaceManager nsmgr = new XmlNamespaceManager(new NameTable());
// make sure the namespace identifier, URN in this case, matches what you have in your XML
nsmgr.AddNamespace("ns", "urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:protocol");
// get the value of Destination attribute from within the Response node with a prefix who's identifier is "urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:protocol" using XPath
var str = xmlDoc.SelectSingleNode("/ns:Response/#Destination", nsmgr);
if (str != null)
{
Console.WriteLine(str.Value);
}
More on XML namespaces here and here.

stuck on xpath query

I have an xmlnodelist which results in the below snippet
<updi:ProductName xmlns:updi="urn:rosettanet:specification:universal:ProductIdentification:xsd:schema:01.04">Packet Processing Card (PPC) 16GB</updi:ProductName>
<ulc:AlternativeIdentifier xmlns:ulc="urn:rosettanet:specification:universal:Locations:xsd:schema:01.04">
<ulc:Authority>PID</ulc:Authority>
<ulc:Identifier>ASR5K-PPC-K9=</ulc:Identifier>
</ulc:AlternativeIdentifier>
<ulc:AlternativeIdentifier xmlns:ulc="urn:rosettanet:specification:universal:Locations:xsd:schema:01.04">
<ulc:Authority>CPN</ulc:Authority>
<ulc:Identifier />
</ulc:AlternativeIdentifier>
How can I grab the two authority and identifier tags? I tried adding a root element but I have issues with the namespaces. The original namespace declaration is very large.

Well, I doubt there's anything wrong with the XPath queries you've tried - more likely it's the namespaces that are tripping you up. There are a few ways to compensate/deal with this, ranging from "strip out all the namespaces" to using the XmlNamespaceManager - here's an example of that:
void Main()
{
var doc = new XmlDocument();
var namespaceMgr = new XmlNamespaceManager(doc.NameTable);
namespaceMgr.AddNamespace("updi", "urn:rosettanet:specification:universal:ProductIdentification:xsd:schema:01.04");
namespaceMgr.AddNamespace("ulc", "urn:rosettanet:specification:universal:Locations:xsd:schema:01.04");
doc.LoadXml(xml);
var authorityTags = doc.SelectNodes("//ulc:Authority", namespaceMgr);
var identifierTags = doc.SelectNodes("//ulc:Identifier", namespaceMgr);
}
Assuming xml is:
string xml = #"
<ROOT>
<updi:ProductName xmlns:updi=""urn:rosettanet:specification:universal:ProductIdentification:xsd:schema:01.04"">
Packet Processing Card (PPC) 16GB
</updi:ProductName>
<ulc:AlternativeIdentifier xmlns:ulc=""urn:rosettanet:specification:universal:Locations:xsd:schema:01.04"">
<ulc:Authority>PID</ulc:Authority>
<ulc:Identifier>ASR5K-PPC-K9=</ulc:Identifier>
</ulc:AlternativeIdentifier>
<ulc:AlternativeIdentifier xmlns:ulc=""urn:rosettanet:specification:universal:Locations:xsd:schema:01.04"">
<ulc:Authority>CPN</ulc:Authority>
<ulc:Identifier />
</ulc:AlternativeIdentifier>
</ROOT>";

The below will return all four nodes from your sample. I did have to wrap it in a root node for my testing. The | operator allows for the union functionality.
//ulc:AlternativeIdentifier/ulc:Authority | //ulc:AlternativeIdentifier/ulc:Identifier
I tested this using Notepad++ with the XPatherizerNPP plugin, which I highly recommend.

Something like this will do the trick:
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load("YourXmlFile");
foreach (XmlNode node in doc.SelectNodes("//*[local-name() = \"Authority\"]"))
{
Console.WriteLine("Authority: " + node.InnerText);
}
foreach (XmlNode node in doc.SelectNodes("//*[local-name() = \"Identifier\"]"))
{
Console.WriteLine("Identifier: " + node.InnerText);
}
Basically, SelectNodes("//*[local-name() = \"Identifier\"]") tells it to search for node in the xml with that name, regardless of namespace, etc.

Reading Elements within a Namespace

I have an XML file that looks like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="https://www.someurl.com/somefile.xslt"?>
<AutoInsuranceClaim xmlns="http://www.someurl.com/schemas/AutoInsuranceClaim">
<Identification>
<BaseOwner>3</BaseOwner>
<BaseType>ABC123</BaseType>
<BaseTypeRef>471038341757</BaseTypeRef>
</Identification>
</AutoInsuranceClaim>
and I'm trying to read the Identification node. Here's my code:
XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
xmlDoc.Load(#"..\..\Data.xml");
XmlNamespaceManager nsmgr = new XmlNamespaceManager(xmlDoc.NameTable);
nsmgr.AddNamespace("ns", "http://www.someurl.com/schemas/AutoInsuranceClaim");
XmlNodeList nodeList = xmlDoc.SelectNodes(#"/ns:AutoInsuranceClaim/Identification", nsmgr);
Console.WriteLine("There are {0} nodes...", nodeList.Count);
I know I should get a least 1 value. My understanding of .NET XML parsing is that if you have a default namespace with no prefix, you have to create your own namespace. But this should have returned 1.
If not, what am I missing?

I might be grasping at straws here, but shouldn't you be namespacing both entities in your xpath expression?
XmlNodeList nodeList = xmlDoc.SelectNodes(#"/ns:AutoInsuranceClaim/ns:Identification", nsmgr);

XElement root = XElement.Load("Data.xml");
var identifications = root.Descendants()
.Where(x => x.Name.LocalName == "Identification")
.ToList()

The problem is that you're trying to find an Identification node without a namespace, but it will have defaulted to the same namespace as the parent due to the xmlns=... part. Try this:
var nodeList = xmlDoc.SelectNodes("/ns:AutoInsuranceClaim/ns:Identification",
nsmgr);
Having tried it myself, it printed a count of 1.
Personally I'd use LINQ to XML instead though, which makes namespace easier handling:
XDocument doc = XDocument.Load(#"..\..\Data.xml");
XNamespace ns = "http://www.someurl.com/schemas/AutoInsuranceClaim";
var nodes = doc.Root.Elements(ns + "Identification");

Get content of XML node using c#

simple question but I've been dinking around with it for an hour and it's really starting to frustrate me. I have XML that looks like this:
<TimelineInfo>
<PreTrialEd>Not Started</PreTrialEd>
<Ambassador>Problem</Ambassador>
<PsychEval>Completed</PsychEval>
</TimelineInfo>
And all I want to do is use C# to get the string stored between <Ambassador> and </Ambassador>.
So far I have:
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load("C:\\test.xml");
XmlNode x = doc.SelectSingleNode("/TimelineInfo/Ambassador");
which selects the note just fine, now how in the world do I get the content in there?

May I suggest having a look at LINQ-to-XML (System.Xml.Linq)?
var doc = XDocument.Load("C:\\test.xml");
string result = (string)doc.Root.Element("Ambassador");
LINQ-to-XML is much more friendly than the Xml* classes (System.Xml).
Otherwise you should be able to get the value of the element by retrieving the InnerText property.
string result = x.InnerText;

The InnerText property should work fine for you.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xmlnode.innertext.aspx
FWIW, you might consider switching API to linq-to-xml (XElement and friends) as IMHO it's a friendly, easier API to interact with.
System.Xml version (NOTE: no casting to XmlElement needed)
var xml = #"<TimelineInfo>
<PreTrialEd>Not Started</PreTrialEd>
<Ambassador>Problem</Ambassador>
<PsychEval>Completed</PsychEval>
</TimelineInfo>";
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.LoadXml(xml);
var node = doc.SelectSingleNode("/TimelineInfo/Ambassador");
Console.WriteLine(node.InnerText);
linq-to-xml version:
var xml = #"<TimelineInfo>
<PreTrialEd>Not Started</PreTrialEd>
<Ambassador>Problem</Ambassador>
<PsychEval>Completed</PsychEval>
</TimelineInfo>";
var root = XElement.Parse(xml);
string ambassador = (string)root.Element("Ambassador");
Console.WriteLine(ambassador);

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load("C:\\test.xml");
XmlNode x = doc.SelectSingleNode("/TimelineInfo/Ambassador");
x.InnerText will return the contents

Try using Linq to XML - it provides a very easy way to query xml datasources - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb387098%28v=VS.100%29.aspx

Read attribute from xml

Can someone help me read attribute ows_AZPersonnummer with asp.net using c# from this xml structure
<listitems
xmlns:s="uuid:BDC6E3F0-6DA3-11d1-A2A3-00AA00C14882"
xmlns:dt="uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C14882"
xmlns:rs="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:rowset"
xmlns:z="#RowsetSchema"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/">
<rs:data ItemCount="1">
<z:row
ows_AZNamnUppdragsansvarig="Peter"
ows_AZTypAvUtbetalning="Arvode till privatperson"
ows_AZPersonnummer="196202081276"
ows_AZPlusgiro="5456436534"
ows_MetaInfo="1;#"
ows__ModerationStatus="0"
ows__Level="1" ows_ID="1"
ows_owshiddenversion="6"
ows_UniqueId="1;#{11E4AD4C-7931-46D8-80BB-7E482C605990}"
ows_FSObjType="1;#0"
ows_Created="2009-04-15T08:29:32Z"
ows_FileRef="1;#uppdragsavtal/Lists/Uppdragsavtal/1_.000"
/>
</rs:data>
</listitems>
And get value 196202081276.

Open this up in an XmlDocument object, then use the SelectNode function with the following XPath:
//*[local-name() = 'row']/#ows_AZPersonnummer
Basically, this looks for every element named "row", regardless of depth and namespace, and returns the ows_AZPersonnummer attribute of it. Should help avoid any namespace issues you might be having.

The XmlNamespaceManager is your friend:
string xml = "..."; //your xml here
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.LoadXml(xml);
XmlNamespaceManager nsm = new XmlNamespaceManager(new NameTable());
nsm.AddNamespace("z", "#RowsetSchema");
XmlNode n = doc.DocumentElement
.SelectSingleNode("//#ows_AZPersonnummer", nsm);
Console.WriteLine(n.Value);
You can also use LINQ to XML:
XDocument xd = XDocument.Parse(xml);
XNamespace xns = "#RowsetSchema";
string result1 = xd.Descendants(xns + "row")
.First()
.Attribute("ows_AZPersonnummer")
.Value;
// Or...
string result2 =
(from el in xd.Descendants(xns + "row")
select el).First().Attribute("ows_AZPersonnummer").Value;

I'd say you need an XML parser, which I believe are common. This looks like a simple XML structure, so the handling code shouldn't be too hard.

Use <%# Eval("path to attribute") %> but you need to load the xml has a DataSource.
Otherwise you can load it using XmlTextReader. Here's an example.