XML parsing via recursionj

[DarwinIT]

I have to parse an XML file coming from a client. I had not worked with XML for a couple years and, as I expected, I ran into some difficulties. I searched high and low on the internet and found a plethora of articles. Some proved to be obsolete. Some just didn't work (dataset). Some I didn't understand exactly how to do them (serialization for one).

I finally thought I had nailed this puppy down. I came up with a recursion routine to convert xml to an arraylist, datatable, or piped string depending on what the developer wants to work with (except XML!!!) Everything seemed to be working great until I discovered that I was returning partial nodes. Turns out the turkeys who originated this data reused tag names - so the principal product which I do a search on to build a nodeList is duplicated.
This is the statement I use to make the list.

XmlNodeList xmlList = xDoc.SelectNodes("//" + elementName); with product being the value passed in to elementName.

Is there anyway I can pass in a duplicated element name so only the node closer to the root is the only one that gets processed? I tried mainelement//product but no go. Still got the child nodes I don't want.

example of xml

<mainelement>

<header>

<merchantId>22</merchantId>
<merchantName>Bogus Merchant </merchantName>
<createdOn>2010-06-29/10:19:48</createdOn>
</header>

<product att1="junk" att2="morejunk" att3="lotsjunk">

<URL>

<product>

http://www.mysite.com

</product>

<productImage>

http://www.mysite.com/myimage.jpg

</productImage>

<buy/>

</URL>

<anotherelement> whatever
</anotherelement>

</product>
</mainelement>

 

[jmeckley]

mainelement/product should work. // is a overload for "any node". if you only want a single node you can also use the SelectNode(query) to select a single node rather than a collection of nodes. you may also want to look into Linq2Xml.

Jason Meckley
Programmer
Specialty Bakers, Inc.

faq855-7190
faq732-7259

 

[DarwinIT]

Ahhhh. That did the trick!!! Thank you so much. I was afraid I'd have to tweak the xml tags before processing. Code is up and running! Thanks again!