Getting wrong information when scraping XML with Linq.

Question

Image I have this XML:

<ipb>
    <profile>
        <id>335389</id>
        <name>stapia.gutierrez</name>
        <rating>0</rating>
    </profile>
</ipb>

I'm trying to get ID, Name and Rating. Any guidance?

Here's what I have and what I receive:

public User FindInformation()
{
  string xml = new WebClient().DownloadString(String.Format("http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/xml.php?showuser={0}", userID));
  XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(xml);

  var id = from u in doc.Descendants("profile")
                 select (string)u.Element("id");

  var name = from u in doc.Descendants("profile")
                 select (string)u.Element("name");

  var rating = from u in doc.Descendants("profile")
                 select (string)u.Element("rating");

  User user = new User();
  user.ID = id.ToString();
  user.Name = name.ToString();
  user.Rating = rating.ToString();

  return user;
}

This is what I get in my TextBox for testing purposes.

System.Linq.Enumerable+WhereSelectEnumerableIterator`2[System.Xml.Linq.XElement,System.String] System.Linq.Enumerable+WhereSelectEnumerableIterator`2[System.Xml.Linq.XElement,System.String] System.Linq.Enumerable+WhereSelectEnumerableIterator`2[System.Xml.Linq.XElement,System.String]

Answer 1

You need to extract a single instance of <profile> and then operate on that:

XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(xml);

foreach(var profile in doc.Descendants("profile"))
{
   var id = profile.Element("id").Value;
   var name = profile.Element("name").Value;
   var rating = profile.Element("rating").Value;

   User user = new User();
   user.ID = id;
   user.Name = name;
   user.Rating = rating;
}

What you're doing now is selecting a list of nodes (doc.Descendants("profile") will return a list of nodes, possibly with just one element - but still a list), and then all the "id" elements from within that list.... not really what you want, I guess!

Answer 2

var id = from u in doc.Descendants("profile")
select (string)u.Element("id");

This & other statements like these will return you an enumerable & not a specific instance. i.e what happens, if your xml has many nodes that satisfy the condition?

So, if you are looking to get the first item (or if you have a xml structure exactly as shown above with no extra nodes), a call to First or FirstOrDefault should help.