How to get contents of a node by name or attribute using LINQ to xml?

Question

_{Sunday, September 24, 2017 2:11 PM}

Say, I have a xml file which look like below

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Employees>
 <Employee>
    <EmpId>1</EmpId>
    <Name>Sam</Name>   
    <Sex>Male</Sex>
    <Phone Type="Home">423-555-0124</Phone>
    <Phone Type="Work">424-555-0545</Phone>
   <Address>
      <Street>7A Cox Street</Street>
      <City>Acampo</City>
      <State>CA</State>
      <Zip>95220</Zip>
      <Country>USA</Country>
    </Address>
 </Employee>
 <Employee>
    <EmpId>2</EmpId>
    <Name>Lucy</Name>
    <Sex>Female</Sex>
    <Phone Type="Home">143-555-0763</Phone>
    <Phone Type="Work">434-555-0567</Phone>
    <Address>
      <Street>Jess Bay</Street>
      <City>Alta</City>
      <State>CA</State>
      <Zip>95701</Zip>
      <Country>USA</Country>
    </Address>
 </Employee>
 <Employee>
    <EmpId>3</EmpId>
    <Name>Kate</Name>
    <Sex>Female</Sex>
    <Phone Type="Home">166-555-0231</Phone>
    <Phone Type="Work">233-555-0442</Phone>
    <Address>
      <Street>23 Boxen Street</Street>
      <City>Milford</City>
      <State>CA</State>
      <Zip>96121</Zip>
      <Country>USA</Country>
    </Address>
 </Employee>
</Employees>

How do I get contents inside the first <Name> node or the second one?

I've tried

XDocument doc = XDocument.Load(@"C:\Users\Desktop\test.xml");
string name1=doc.Element("Name").Value;
textBox1.Text=name1;

But it given an error System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

All replies (3)

_{Monday, September 25, 2017 2:08 AM ✅Answered | 1 vote}

Hello Don Bradman,

>>is there a way to get the content of a node by name which might a child node to different nodes or do I have to always specify what are the parent nodes of the node whose content I want to use

yes, if you want to get node value by node name directly , you could try to use  Descendants.

var result1 =xDocument.Descendants("Name").Select(s=> s.Value);

>>and also how do I get, say the 2nd <Name> node content i.e. "Lucy"?

You should choose the node as sign that specify the 2nd node . Something like below.

var result = from s in xDocument.Descendants("Employee")
                         where s.Element("EmpId").Value == "2"
                         select s.Element("Name").Value;

Sincerely,

feih_7

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_{Sunday, September 24, 2017 3:10 PM | 1 vote}

To get the first name:

   string name1 = doc.Root.Element( "Employee" ).Element( "Name" ).Value;

To access all of the names in a loop:

   foreach( var node in doc.Root.Elements( "Employee" ) )

   {

      string name = node.Element( "Name" ).Value;

   // . . .

   }

To get a collection of names using XPath and LINQ:

   using System.Xml.XPath;
   . . .
   var names = doc.XPathSelectElements( "/*/Employee/Name" ).Select( n => n.Value );

_{Sunday, September 24, 2017 4:01 PM}

Hi Viorel,

Thank you for the answer.

BTW, is there a way to get the content of a node by name which might a child node to different nodes or do I have to always specify what are the parent nodes of the node whose content I want to use? and also how do I get, say the 2nd <Name> node content i.e. "Lucy"?