Deborah's Developer MindScape

In this prior post, I demonstrated how to find a node in an XML string. In this post, I expand on that topic to find a set of nodes. You can then process those nodes as needed in your application. In this example, the set of nodes are displayed in a ComboBox.

If you are targeting the .NET Framework version 3.5 or later, you can use Linq to XML to retrieve a set of nodes. This example using Linq.

Here is the XML we will use in this example:

<States>
  <State name="California">
    <Regions>
      <Region name="San Luis Obispo">
      <Area name="Santa Maria" />
      <Area name="Seaside" />
      </Region>
      <Region name="Silicon Valley">
        <Area name="San Jose"/>
        <Area name="Sunnyvale"/>
      </Region>
      <Region name="Springfield">
        <Area name="Emeryville"/>
        <Area name="Hooterville"/>
      </Region>
    </Regions>
  </State>
  <State name="Wisconsin">
    <Regions>
      <Region name="Milwaukee">
        <Area name="Mukwanago"/>
        <Area name="Germantown"/>
      </Region>
      <Region name="Fox Valley">
        <Area name="Oshkosh" />
        <Area name="Appleton" />
      </Region>
      <Region name="Springfield">
        <Area name="Ogdenville"/>
        <Area name="Shelbyville"/>
      </Region>
    </Regions>
  </State>
</States>

Starting with a simple example, let’s find the set of all regions and display them in a combo box.

In C#:

// Build a list of region names
var regionElements = doc.Descendants("Region");
var regionEnumeration = regionElements.Select
                        (r => r.Attribute("name").Value);
List<string> regionList = regionEnumeration.ToList();
regionList.Sort();

// Bind to a ComboBox
comboBox1.DataSource = regionList;

// OR

List<string> regions = doc.Descendants("Region").Select
                       (r => r.Attribute("name").Value).ToList();
regions.Sort();
comboBox1.DataSource = regions;

In VB:

‘ Build a list of region names
Dim regionElements = doc…<Region>
Dim regionEnumeration = regionElements.Select(Function(r) r.@name)
Dim regionList As List(Of String) = regionEnumeration.ToList
regionList.Sort()

‘ Bind to a ComboBox
ComboBox1.DataSource = regionList

‘ OR

Dim regions As List(Of String) = doc…<Region>.Select _
                                 (Function(r) r.@name).ToList
regions.Sort()
ComboBox1.DataSource = regions

The code first finds the set of region elements. The C# code uses the XElement methods and the VB code uses XML literals.

Only the name of the regions are needed, so the next statement selects the name attribute. Again, the C# code uses the XElement methods and the VB code uses XML literals.

NOTE: You can also use the XElement methods in VB as well.

The enumeration is then converted to a list so it can be sorted and assigned as a DataSource.

The second set of code combines the set of Linq to XML statements into one for a more condensed version of the code.

The result is as follows:

Use this technique any time you need to retrieve a set of nodes from an XML file.

Enjoy.