Get html tags embedded in xml using linq

Question

Hi

I have a basic xml file that looks like this.

    <root>
     <item>
        <title><p>some title</p></title>
     </item>
    ...
    </root>

What I want, is to get the whole title string including the html tag of the xml using linq and displaying it in a repeater . I can get the title with no problem, but the <p> tag is being stripped out.

If I use
title = item.Element("title").ToString(), it works somehow but I get all the xml tag as well - meaning the title is not displayed in html.

I already tried with encoding the "<" with "<" but to do this makes the xml hard to read.

What would be a possible solution besides using CDATA and encoding?

Cheers Terry

Answer 1

Create a reader from the title element and read InnerXml:

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        string xml = "<root><item><title><p>some title</p></title></item></root>";

        XDocument xdoc = XDocument.Parse(xml);
        XElement te = xdoc.Descendants("title").First();
        using (XmlReader reader = te.CreateReader())
        {
            if (reader.Read())
                title = reader.ReadInnerXml();
        }
    }

Answer 2

See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3793/best-way-to-get-innerxml-of-an-xelement for some ideas on how to get the "InnerXml" of an XElement.

Answer 3

XElement x = XElement.Parse(your xml);

var y= x.Descendants("title").Descendants();

Then iterate y for a list of the contents of the title elements.

BTW, LINQPad (http://www.linqpad.net) is a handy free tool for trying out LINQ-XML.