How can I read all elements in a plain XML using XMLReader in .Net 2.0?

Question

I have the following XML:

<XMLDictionary>
  <a>b</a>
  <c>d</c>
  <e>f</e>
</XMLDictionary>

I'm trying to get the mappings a: b, c: d, e: f, and I can't quite find how to do it simply.

My current code looks like this:

 Do While reader.Read()
  If reader.NodeType = Xml.XmlNodeType.Element Then
   Me.Add(reader.Name, reader.ReadElementString)
  End If
 Loop

The problem is that I don't know how to read the contents of the element without calling ReadElementString, and ReadElementString advances the "pointer" to the next node (so reader.Name already has the next value). When in the loop I call Read() again, i'm skipping nodes.
I've tried several variations on this theme, and none works perfectly, which indicates that i'm missing something important here.

Any pointers?

Thanks

Answer 1

Try this (untested):

    Do While reader.Read()
            If reader.NodeType = Xml.XmlNodeType.Element Then
                    Me.Add(reader.Name, reader.Value)
            End If
    Loop

Answer 2

I don't know if I would use the XmlReader for what you are doing, probably just an XmlDocument, but if you want the reader, probably something like this might work:

Dim lastNode As String = string.Empty
Do While reader.Read()
     If reader.NodeType = Xml.XmlNodeType.Element Then
        lastNode = reader.Name
     Else If reader.NodeType = Xml.XmlNodeType.Text AND NOT string.IsNullOrEmpty(lastNode) THEN
         Me.Add(lastNode,reader.Value)
         lastNode = string.Empty    
     End If
Loop

Forgive me for any syntax errors; it's been a while since of written in VB.net. This is a basic state machine that first detects if an Element is found and then starts looking for a text value.

Answer 3

How about using reader.ReadString() instead of reader.ReadElementString()? Or possibly instead of that just use reader.Value to get the value of the current node.

Answer 4

   Dim name As String
   Dim value As String

   While reader.Read()
        If reader.NodeType = XmlNodeType.Element Then
            name = reader.Name
            reader.Read()
            value = If((String.IsNullOrEmpty(reader.Value) OrElse reader.Value.Contains(Environment.NewLine)), "", reader.Value)
            Me.Add(name, value)
        End If
    End While