Best way to read through xml

Question

HI I have a xml document like this:

<Students>
<student name="A" class="1"/>
<student name="B"class="2"/>
<student name="c" class="3"/>
</Students>

I want to use XmlReader to read through this xml and return a list of students as List<student>. I know this can be achieved as follows:

 List<Student> students = new List<Student>();
    XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create("AppManifest.xml");
    while (reader.Read())
    {
       if (reader.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element && reader.Name == "student")
       {
            students.Add(new Student()
            {
                 Name = reader.GetAttribute("name"),
                 Class = reader.GetAttribute("Class")
             });
        }
     }

I just want to know if there is any better solution for this?

I am using silverlight 4. The xml structure is static, ie. it will have only one Students node and all the student node with above said attributes will only be there.

score 53 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 04 '11 at 15:31

Absolutely - use LINQ to XML. It's so much simpler:

XDocument doc = XDocument.Load("AppManifest.xml");
var students = doc.Root
                  .Elements("student")
                  .Select(x => new Student {
                              Name = (string) x.Attribute("name"),
                              Class = (string) x.Attribute("class")
                          })
                  .ToList();

XmlReader is a relatively low-level type - I would avoid it unless you really can't afford to slurp the whole of the XML into memory at a time. Even then there are ways of using LINQ to XML in conjunction with XmlReader if you just want subtrees of the document.

@Chinjoo: XDocument not XMLDocument. And yes it does: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.linq.xdocument(v=VS.95).aspx — Jon Skeet, Mar 04 '11 at 15:33

score 8 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 04 '11 at 15:33

It's alot easier if we're using Linq xml:

var xDoc = XDocument.Load("AppManifest.xml");

var students = 
    xDoc.Root.Elements("student")
    .Select(n =>
        new Student
        {
            Name = (string)n.Attribute("name"),
            Class = (string)n.Attribute("class"),
        })
    .ToList();

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 14 '16 at 05:06

1

Refer to the link below,

http://www.nearinfinity.com/blogs/joe_ferner/performance_linq_to_sql_vs.html

XmlReader is supported in Silverlight (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc189001(v=vs.95).aspx)

XmlReader like a SQLDataReader is basically a non-cached model, so they are performance oriented but you can move only 'Forward' with that.

edited Sep 14 '16 at 05:06

shA.t

16,580
5
54
111

answered Nov 27 '12 at 11:54

Bharat Ram V

101
1
3

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 04 '11 at 15:37

List<Student> students = (from student in doc.Element("Students").Elements("student")
                          select new Student { 
                              Name = student.Attribute("name"), 
                              Class = student.Attribute("class") }
                          ).ToList();

score 0 · Answer 5 · edited Sep 14 '16 at 05:06

You can use like that:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    XmlTextReader reader = new XmlTextReader(Server.MapPath("~/XML"));

    while(reader.Read())
    {
        switch(reader.NodeType)
        {
            case XmlNodeType.Element:                            
                var lbl = new  Label();
                lbl.Text=(reader.Name + " -> " );
                break;

            case XmlNodeType.Text:                                 
                Response.Write(reader.Value + "<br />");
                 break;

            case XmlNodeType.EndElement:                        
                 Response.Write("</" + reader.Name + ">");
                 break;
        }
    }
}

Best way to read through xml

5 Answers5

Linked

Related