Parsing IIS configuration xml doc with linq to xml

Question

Hi Guys,

I am writing a small app that finds all the folders IIS is referencing.

To do this I take the IIS config file and parse the xml looking for elements called IIsWebVirtualDir and look for the Path attribute.

Here is my code

XDocument doc = XDocument.Load(xmlPath);

                IEnumerable<XElement> elements = doc.Elements();

                foreach (XElement element in elements)
                {
                    elementCount++;
                    foreach (XAttribute attribute in element.Attributes())
                    {
                        if(attribute.Name == "Path")
                        {
                            pathsFound++;
                            String path = attribute.Value + ",";
                            Console.WriteLine(path);
                            pathsAsStr.Append(path);
                        }
                    }
                }

I have also tried using IEnumerable elements = doc.Elements().Descendants("IIsWebVirtualDir");

The code compiles but I never find more than one element. Why is this? What am I doing wrong?

I would attach the xml but its too big

Answer 1

Try something like this:

int elementCount = doc.Elements().Count();
var elementsWithPathAttribute = doc.Elements().Where(el => el.Attribute("Path") != null);

/*
    The non lamba version would be
    var elementsWithPathAttribute = from el in doc.Elements()
                                    where el.Attribute("Path") != null
                                    select el;
/*

foreach(XElement element in elementsWithPathAttribute)
{
   //do processing here.
}

Another way would be to do this:

using Syste.Xml.XPath;
using System.Xml.Linq;

//....

var elementsWithPathAttribute = 
    doc.Elements.XPathSelectElements("//*[@Path]")

Answer 2

How about:

var apps = from element in elements
           where element.Attributes["Path"] != null
           select element;

To retrieve all the elements you need. You now have an IEnumerable with the correct elements.