How to read "dc:creator" element from an RSS feed using System.ServiceModel.Syndication

Question

Scenario

I am consuming an RSS feed that looks, in part, like this:

<item>
    <title>Blog Title Here</title>
    <link>http://blogurl.com/2010/03/23/title/&lt;/link&gt;
    <comments>http://blogurl.com/2010/03/23/title/#comments&lt;/comments&gt;
    <pubDate>Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:44:54 +0000</pubDate>
    <dc:creator>AuthorName</dc:creator>
    <category><![CDATA[CategoryName]]></category>
    <guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogurl.com/?p=102&lt;/guid&gt;
    <description><![CDATA[Description of post content]]></description>
    <content:encoded><![CDATA[Full blog post here]]></content:encoded>
</item>

I am using Rss20FeedFormatter to get a list of SyndicationItems, like this:

List<SyndicationItem> items;
using (var reader = XmlReader.Create("http://blogurl.com/feed/"))
{
  var formatter = new Rss20FeedFormatter();
  formatter.ReadFrom(reader);
  items = formatter.Feed.Items.ToList();
}

Problem

I have no idea how to access the value dc:creator element. I believe that I need to use ElementExtensions somehow, but I'm not sure of the syntax, and can't find examples anywhere.

Answer 1

Here's a short F# sample, that hopefully steers you to some useful APIs:

let xml = @"
<rss version=""2.0"">
<channel xmlns:dc=""http://whatever.it.is/"" xmlns:content=""http://that.too/""&gt;
<title>testing</title>
<item> 
    <title>Blog Title Here</title> 
    <link>http://blogurl.com/2010/03/23/title/&lt;/link&gt; 
    <comments>http://blogurl.com/2010/03/23/title/#comments&lt;/comments&gt; 
    <pubDate>Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:44:54 +0000</pubDate> 
    <dc:creator>AuthorName</dc:creator> 
    <category><![CDATA[CategoryName]]></category> 
    <guid isPermaLink=""false"">http://blogurl.com/?p=102&lt;/guid&gt; 
    <description><![CDATA[Description of post content]]></description> 
    <content:encoded><![CDATA[Full blog post here]]></content:encoded> 
</item> 
</channel>
</rss>
"

open System.Xml 
open System.IO
open System.ServiceModel.Syndication
let ReadIt() =
    use reader = XmlReader.Create(new StringReader(xml))
    let formatter = new Rss20FeedFormatter()
    formatter.ReadFrom(reader)
    let items = formatter.Feed.Items
    for item in items do
        // if I know there are dc:creator elements (that can deserialize with DataContract of type 'string')
        let dcCreators = item.ElementExtensions.ReadElementExtensions<string>("creator","http://whatever.it.is/")
        for dcc in dcCreators do
            printfn "dcc : %s" dcc
        // if just probing around
        for ee in item.ElementExtensions do
            printfn "extension `%s:%s'" ee.OuterNamespace ee.OuterName 
            use eer = ee.GetReader()
            let inner = eer.ReadInnerXml()
            printfn "    %s" inner
ReadIt()