C# XmlDocument how to get pointer to root element and iterate over children-CodePudding

In XML Document:

Foo.xml

<products>
    <product>
        <id>1</id>
          <name>Foo</name>
    </product>
    <product>
        <id>2</id>
        <name>Bar</name>
    </product>
</products>

How to get this root element, iterate over his child elements and get their properties?

Bar.cs

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load(path   "/foo.xml");

XmlNode mainNode = doc.DocumentElement.SelectSingleNode("products");
XmlNode root = mainNode.FirstChild; //null

foreach (XmlNode node in mainNode)
{
    int id = Convert.ToInt32(node["id"].InnerText);
    string name = node["name"].InnerText);
    list.Items.Add(id);
    list.Items.Add(name);
}

This code implicates that mainNode is null. What is the best practise of doing that?

CodePudding user response：

The DocumentElement is the outermost element of the XML, i.e. the <products> element. You can't select another <products> element below it.

What you can do:

XmlNode mainNode = doc.SelectSingleNode("products");

XmlNode mainNode = doc.DocumentElement;

XmlNode mainNode = doc.DocumentElement.SelectSingleNode("//products");

The second one is probably the fastest, since it does not need to parse and process a query. The last one is overkill and should be avoided for clean code reasons (KISS principle).