Use LINQ to read all nodes from XML

Question

I have a XML file, like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<ROOT>
    <NAME>
        ItemName
    </NAME>
    <LIST>
       <ITEM>
          ListItem1
       </ITEM> 
       <ITEM>
          ListItem2
       </ITEM> 
       <ITEM>
          ListItem3
       </ITEM> 
    </LIST>
</ROOT>

How can I use LINQ to get all the ITEMs inside the LIST tag?

Answer 1

Something like:

XDocument doc = XDocument.Load("foo.xml");
var items = from list in doc.Descendants("LIST")
            from item in list.Elements("ITEM")
            select item;

That will cope with multiple "LIST" elements, and won't find "ITEM" elements except directly under "LIST" ones. If you don't care about those finer points you could just use:

XDocument doc = XDocument.Load("foo.xml");
var items = doc.Descendants("ITEM");

Answer 2

An alternative syntax would be to chain the Descendents method to specifically get the ITEM nodes which are children of the LIST nodes:

XDocument doc = XDocument.Load("foo.xml");
var nodes = doc.Descendants("LIST").Descendants("ITEM");