Get content of XML node using c#

Question

Hi all, simple question but I've been dinking around with it for an hour and it's really starting to frustrate me. I have XML that looks like this:

  <TimelineInfo>
    <PreTrialEd>Not Started</PreTrialEd>
    <Ambassador>Problem</Ambassador>
    <PsychEval>Completed</PsychEval>
  </TimelineInfo>

And all I want to do is use C# to get the string stored between <Ambassador> and </Ambassador>.

So far I have:

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load("C:\\test.xml");
XmlNode x = doc.SelectSingleNode("/TimelineInfo/Ambassador");

which selects the note just fine, now how in the world do I get the content in there?

Answer 1

May I suggest having a look at LINQ-to-XML (System.Xml.Linq)?

var doc = XDocument.Load("C:\\test.xml");

string result = (string)doc.Root.Element("Ambassador");

LINQ-to-XML is much more friendly than the Xml* classes (System.Xml).

---

Otherwise you should be able to get the value of the element by retrieving the InnerText property.

string result = x.InnerText;

Answer 2

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load("C:\\test.xml");
XmlNode x = doc.SelectSingleNode("/TimelineInfo/Ambassador");

x.InnerText will return the contents

Answer 3

Try using Linq to XML - it provides a very easy way to query xml datasources - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb387098%28v=VS.100%29.aspx

Answer 4

The InnerText property should work fine for you.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xmlnode.innertext.aspx

FWIW, you might consider switching API to linq-to-xml (XElement and friends) as IMHO it's a friendly, easier API to interact with.

System.Xml version (NOTE: no casting to XmlElement needed)

var xml = @"<TimelineInfo>
                <PreTrialEd>Not Started</PreTrialEd>
                <Ambassador>Problem</Ambassador>
                <PsychEval>Completed</PsychEval>
            </TimelineInfo>";
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.LoadXml(xml);
var node = doc.SelectSingleNode("/TimelineInfo/Ambassador");
Console.WriteLine(node.InnerText);

linq-to-xml version:

var xml = @"<TimelineInfo>
                <PreTrialEd>Not Started</PreTrialEd>
                <Ambassador>Problem</Ambassador>
                <PsychEval>Completed</PsychEval>
            </TimelineInfo>";
var root = XElement.Parse(xml);
string ambassador = (string)root.Element("Ambassador");
Console.WriteLine(ambassador);