Sorting an the content of an XPathNodeIterator in C#

Question

I have a DLL which I (for many reasons) cannot change. I use this assembly to retrieve a an XPathNodeIterator.

I know I can sort XML with an XPathExpression on an XPathNavigator to get an XPathNodeIterator, the problem is that I start from the XPathNodeIterator is there any way to apply a sort afterward?

Answer 1

Since this type is an iterator there is no way to sort the contents without enumerating the entire iterator and loading the data into a different, sortable structure.

Please see XPathNodeIterator Members for a list of the members that are available on this type (unfortunately, none of which support sorting).

Answer 2

XPathNodeIterator is non-generic IEnumerable of XPathNavigator. Thus, if you use .NET 3.5 and LINQ, you can do something like this:

IEnumerable<XPathNavigator> sorted =
     from XPathNavigator nav in nodeIterator
     orderby nav.GetAttribute("@id")
     select nav;