Knowledge Base

HOW TO: Access XML Data Using DOM in .NET Framework with Visual C# .NET

Article ID: 317664

Article Last Modified on 9/16/2003

APPLIES TO

Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0
Microsoft Visual C# .NET 2002 Standard Edition
Microsoft Visual C# .NET 2003 Standard Edition

This article was previously published under Q317664

For a Microsoft Visual Basic .NET version of this article, see 317663.

This article refers to the following Microsoft .NET Framework Class Library namespaces:

System.Xml
System.Text

IN THIS TASK

SUMMARY

Requirements
System.Xml Methods and Properties
Access Data from XML Documents

REFERENCES

SUMMARY

This step-by-step article explains how to access required data in extensible markup language (XML) documents programmatically by using the System.Xml.XmlDocument class and the related classes.

The System.Xml.XmlDocument class implements the core XML Document Object Model (DOM) parser of the .NET Framework. The System.Xml.XmlDocument class is compliant with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) DOM Level 1 and Level 2 Core standards.

XML content can be classified broadly into a collection of nodes and attributes of those nodes. You can use the DOM model implementation of System.Xml to query or to access these nodes and attributes of XML documents. The DOM implmentation of System.Xml provides several ways to access these nodes and the attributes.

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Requirements

The following list outlines the recommended hardware, software, network infrastructure, and service packs that are required:

Microsoft Windows XP, Windows 2000, or Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6a
Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) 2.6 or later
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET

This article assumes that you are familiar with the following topics:

Visual C# .NET syntax
XML and the related standards

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System.Xml Methods and Properties

This section describes several methods and properties of System.Xml classes. For more information, see the Microsoft Framework .NET Software Development Kit (SDK) documentation.

You can use the SelectNodes and the SelectSingleNode methods that the XmlDocument class implements to specify and to execute XPath queries against XML data that is loaded into the DOM. For additional information about how to use these methods and to see a relevant code sample, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

318499 HOW TO: Use the System.Xml.XmlDocument Class to Execute XPath Queries in Visual C# .NET

For additional information about how to execute XPath queries with the System.Xml classes, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

313828 INFO: Roadmap for Executing XPath Queries in .NET Applications

To access data, you typically select or navigate to one or more required nodes and then use the resulting one or more nodes to manipulate the XML content. The following is a list of relevant System.Xml properties and methods:

InnerText and InnerXml. Find concatenated values of all child nodes or the markup of all child nodes respectively.
Value. Provides access to the value of a node.
Attributes. Finds the collection of attributes of the current node.
FirstChild, LastChild, and ChildNodes. Provide access to the first node, the last node, or all of the child nodes of the current node.
NextSibling and PreviousSibling. Provide access to the nodes immediately follow and immediately precede respectively.
DocumentElement. Provides access to the root XmlElement of the document.
Item. Finds the specified child element.
NodeType (of type XmlNodeType). Indicates the type of the current node; for example Attribute, Element, or Text.
XmlNodeType. Enumeration holds all possible node types.
GetElementsByTagName and GetElementByID. Provide access to one or more specified XML elements.

You can use several other properties and methods to access XML content, such as Name and NameTable. For the complete list, see the Microsoft .NET Framework SDK documentation.

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Access Data from XML Documents

The following example shows how to use some of these methods to access XML data. Read the inline comments to understand how the code works.

Use Notepad or a similar text editor to save the following data as a file named C:\Q317664.xml:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='ISO-8859-1' standalone='yes'?>
<Collection>
   <Book Id='1' ISBN='1-100000ABC-200'>
      <Title>Principle of Relativity</Title>
      <!-- Famous physicist -->      
      <Author>Albert Einstein</Author>
      <Genre>Physics</Genre>
   </Book>
   <Book Id='2' ISBN='1-100000ABC-300'>
      <!-- Also came as a TV serial -->
      <Title>Cosmos</Title>
      <Author>Carl Sagan</Author>
      <Genre>Cosmology</Genre>
   </Book>
   <!-- Add additional books here -->
</Collection>

Create a new Visual C# .NET Console Application project.

Replace the code in Class1.cs with the following code. This example loads the XML document from a file representing a collection of Books and then accesses the content using some of the methods mentioned earlier.

using System;
using System.Xml;
using System.Text;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
   class Class1
   {
      public static int GetNodeTypeCount(XmlNode node, XmlNodeType nodeType)
      {
         // Recursively loop through the given node and return 
         // the number of occurences of a specific nodeType.
         int i = 0;

         if (node.NodeType == nodeType)
            i = i + 1;

         if (node.HasChildNodes)
            foreach (XmlNode cNode in node.ChildNodes)
               i = i + GetNodeTypeCount(cNode, nodeType);

         return i;
      }

      [STAThread]
      static void Main(string[] args)
      {
         try
         {
            // Create an Xml document instance and load XML data.
            XmlDocument doc  = new XmlDocument();
            doc.Load("C:\\Q317664.xml"); 
                   
            // 1. Select all the Book titles by using an XPath query.
            XmlNodeList nodeList = doc.SelectNodes("//Book/Title");
            XmlNode node;
            Console.WriteLine("{0}", "TITLES LIST: ");
            foreach (XmlNode nd in nodeList)
               Console.WriteLine("{0}", nd.InnerText);

            // 2. Read the XmlDeclartion values.
            XmlDeclaration decl = (XmlDeclaration) doc.FirstChild;
            Console.WriteLine("\n{0}", "XML DECLARTION:");
            Console.WriteLine("{0}", "Version    " + "= " + decl.Version);
            Console.WriteLine("{0}", "Encoding   " + "= " + decl.Encoding);
            Console.WriteLine("{0}", "Standalone " + "= " + decl.Standalone);

            // 3. Move to the first node of DOM and get all of its attributes.
            XmlElement root = doc.DocumentElement;
            node = root.FirstChild;
            Console.WriteLine("\n{0}", "ATTRIBUTES OF THE FIRST CHILD:");
            foreach  (XmlAttribute attr in node.Attributes)
               Console.WriteLine("{0}", attr.Name + " = " + attr.InnerText);

            // 4. Navigate to the child nodes of the first Book node.
            Console.WriteLine("\n{0}", "FIRST NODE'S CHILDREN:");
            if (node.HasChildNodes)
               foreach (XmlNode cNode in node.ChildNodes)
                  Console.WriteLine("{0}", cNode.OuterXml);

            // 5. Navigate to the next sibling of the first Book node.
            node = node.NextSibling;
            Console.WriteLine("\n{0}", "NEXT SIBLING:");
            if (node != null)
               Console.WriteLine("{0}", node.OuterXml);
            
            // 6. Get the parent node details of the current node.
            Console.WriteLine("\n{0}", "PARENT NODE NAME = " + node.ParentNode.Name);
            Console.WriteLine("{0}", "PARENT NODE HAS " + node.ParentNode.ChildNodes.Count + " CHILD NODES");
            Console.WriteLine("{0}", "PARENT NODE'S NAMESPACE URI = " + node.ParentNode.NamespaceURI);

            // 7. Count the number of Comment nodes in the document.
            // You could search for other types in the same way.
            int commentNodes = Class1.GetNodeTypeCount(doc.DocumentElement, XmlNodeType.Comment);
            Console.WriteLine("\n{0}\n", "NUMBER OF COMMENT NODES IN THE DOC = " + commentNodes);
            Console.ReadLine();
         }
         catch(XmlException xmlEx)        // Handle the XML Exceptions here.         
         {
            Console.WriteLine("{0}", xmlEx.Message);
         }
         catch(Exception ex)              // Handle the Generic Exceptions here.
         {
            Console.WriteLine("{0}", ex.Message);
         }
      }
   }
}

Compile and then run the application.

NOTE: The file Q317664.xml should be in the same folder as the executable file (or you can modify the file path in the code).

The output should resemble the following:

TITLES LIST:
Principle of Relativity
Cosmos

XML DECLARTION:
Version    = 1.0
Encoding   = ISO-8859-1
Standalone = yes

ATTRIBUTES OF THE FIRST CHILD:
Id = 1
ISBN = 1-100000ABC-200

FIRST NODE'S CHILDREN:
<Title>Principle of Relativity</Title>
<!-- Famous physicist -->
<Author>Albert Einstein</Author>
<Genre>Physics</Genre>

NEXT SIBLING:
<Book Id="2" ISBN="1-100000ABC-300"><!-- Also came as a TV serial --><Title>Cosm
os</Title><Author>Carl Sagan</Author><Genre>Cosmology</Genre></Book>

PARENT NODE NAME = Collection
PARENT NODE HAS 3 CHILD NODES
PARENT NODE'S NAMESPACE URI =

NUMBER OF COMMENT NODES IN THE DOC = 3

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REFERENCES

For additional information, visit the following Microsoft Web sites:

System.Xml Namespace
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfsystemxml.asp

XML
http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml

For additional information, click the article numbers below to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

313824 INFO: Roadmap for Programming XML with the DOM-Model Parser in the .NET Framework

313651 INFO: Roadmap for XML in the .NET Framework

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Keywords: kbhowtomaster kbbcl KB317664

Microsoft KB Archive/317664

Contents

HOW TO: Access XML Data Using DOM in .NET Framework with Visual C# .NET

IN THIS TASK

SUMMARY

Requirements

System.Xml Methods and Properties

Access Data from XML Documents

REFERENCES