Develop Reference

Getting attributes from xml using Linq

I have an xml document that I want to obtain attributes from
Here is the XML:
<Translations>
<Product Name="Room" ID="16">
<Terms>
<Term Generic="Brand" Product="Sub Category" />
<Term Generic="Range" Product="Brand" />
</Terms>
</Product>
<Product Name="House"" ID="29">
<Terms>
<Term Generic="Category" Product="Product Brand" />
<Term Generic="Brand" Product="Category Description" />
<Term Generic="Range" Product="Group Description" />
<Term Generic="Product" Product="Product Description" />
</Terms>
</Product>
</Translations>
Here is my current Linq query
public static string clsTranslationTesting(string GenericTerm, int ProductID)
{
const string xmlFilePath = "C:\\Dev\\XMLTrial\\XMLFile1.xml";
var xmlDocument = XDocument.Load(xmlFilePath);
var genericValue =
from gen in xmlDocument.Descendants("Product")
where gen.Attribute("ID").Value == ProductID.ToString()
select gen.Value.ToString();
}
The error that I am having is when I pass data into the method, the method loads the xml from the file to the xmlDocument variable successfully. However when it executes the query it returns a value null. I want to obtain the ID value.

I'm a little lost with your question, but here's my attempt.
First thing is you need to change "Customer" to "Product". Your XML contains not a single instance of the word "Customer" so I think you have a typo there.
I don't know exactly what you want returned from the query (I assume just the entire matched node?). Try this:
var genericValue = xmlDocument.Descendants("Product")
.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Attribute("ID").Value == "16");
I made a fiddle here that shows it in action

Unsure of how to use LINQ to access this particular element

* I'm completely new to this, and this is a personal project I am doing. *
So I have an XML document structured like this
<Licensing key="20325">
<Organization Org="500">
<Constraints>
<MaximumOrgsInSecurity>2</MaximumOrgsInSecurity>
<MaximumUsersInSecurity>999</MaximumUsersInSecurity>
<MaximumLoggedInUsers>999</MaximumLoggedInUsers>
<MaximumLenders>1</MaximumLenders>
<OptOutofPasswordPolicy>FALSE</OptOutofPasswordPolicy>
</Constraints>
<Modules>
<Module registered="true" name="DV" id="1" />
<Module registered="true" name="DP" id="2" />
<Module registered="true" name="DCC" id="3" />
<Module registered="false" name="DRE" id="4" />
</Modules>
</Organization>
</Licensing>
and I am trying to read it using LINQ in my C# code, and although I am attempting to following this tutorial on LINQ (http://www.dotnetcurry.com/linq/564/linq-to-xml-tutorials-examples), I just can't seem to access the elements I would like. For example, how would I use LINQ to get the key number of 20325, Org number of 500, id/name/registered of each module, and stuff like that? The XML document has to be in this format. Any help or walkthroughs would be appreciated, thank you!
EDIT:
For example, I've tried doing
IEnumerable<XElement> Licensing = xelement.Elements();
foreach (var Organization in Licensing)
{
System.Diagnostics.Debug.Write(Organization.Element("Constraints").Value);
}
to see what this would give me, and it gives 29999991FALSE, when I was hoping it would give something along the lines of
MaximumOrgsInSecurity
MaximumUsersInSecurity
MaximumLoggedInUsers
MaximumLenders
OptOutofPasswordPolicy
or at least
2
999
999
1
False
I've also tried doing
IEnumerable<XElement> Licensing = xelement.Elements();
foreach (var Organization in Licensing)
{
System.Diagnostics.Debug.Write(Organization.Element("Modules").Value);
}
to see what this would give, and it gives absolutely nothing.
If there is a better way than LINQ to do this, then I am all ears. The only reason I am saying LINQ is because based on what I've found so far, LINQ would be my best bet to achieve what I am attempting to do.

Those key values are called Attributes and here's a few different ways to access them:
Debug.WriteLine(xelement.Attribute("key").Value);
Debug.WriteLine(xelement.Element("Organization").Attribute("Org").Value);
Debug.WriteLine(((XElement)xelement.FirstNode).Attribute("Org").Value);
For the constraints you're selecting a level to high, need to select the child nodes with .Elements():
foreach (var constraint in xelement.Descendants("Constraints").Elements())
{
Debug.WriteLine(constraint.Name + ": " + constraint.Value);
}
foreach (var constraint in xelement.Element("Organization").Element("Constraints").Elements())
{
Debug.WriteLine(constraint.Name + ": " + constraint.Value);
}
You can also add using System.Diagnostics; to the top of the file so you don't need to add it before every Debug too.

So based on what #mattmanser said, and further looking into LINQ and Xelement/Xdocument, I figured out how to do what I'm looking to do.
For example, say I want to know all of the "registered" booleans within the modules element and store them in an array of booleans, Id do this:
string Name = FileUpload1.FileName;
bool[] ModuleBools = new bool[4];
for (int moduleID = 1; moduleID < 5; moduleID++)
{
var quotes = XDocument.Load("C:/Users/.../Created XMLs/" + Name)
.Descendants("Module")
.Where(x => (string)x.Attribute("id") == moduleID.ToString())
.Select(x => (string)x.Attribute("registered"))
.ToList();
ModuleBools[moduleID-1] = bool.Parse(quotes.First());
}

Excuse the VB. With the given example, here is how you would access each item. The variable names, though the same as the elements, are just names.
Dim someXE As XElement
' someXE = XElement.Load("path here") 'to load from file / uri
' for testing we can do this
someXE = <Licensing key="20325">
<Organization Org="500">
<Constraints>
<MaximumOrgsInSecurity>2</MaximumOrgsInSecurity>
<MaximumUsersInSecurity>999</MaximumUsersInSecurity>
<MaximumLoggedInUsers>999</MaximumLoggedInUsers>
<MaximumLenders>1</MaximumLenders>
<OptOutofPasswordPolicy>FALSE</OptOutofPasswordPolicy>
</Constraints>
<Modules>
<Module registered="true" name="DV" id="1"/>
<Module registered="true" name="DP" id="2"/>
<Module registered="true" name="DCC" id="3"/>
<Module registered="false" name="DRE" id="4"/>
</Modules>
</Organization>
</Licensing>
Dim key As String = someXE.#key
Dim MaximumOrgsInSecurity As String = someXE.<Organization>.<Constraints>.<MaximumOrgsInSecurity>.Value
Dim MaximumUsersInSecurity As String = someXE.<Organization>.<Constraints>.<MaximumOrgsInSecurity>.Value
Dim MaximumLoggedInUsers As String = someXE.<Organization>.<Constraints>.<MaximumLoggedInUsers>.Value
Dim MaximumLenders As String = someXE.<Organization>.<Constraints>.<MaximumLenders>.Value
Dim OptOutofPasswordPolicy As String = someXE.<Organization>.<Constraints>.<OptOutofPasswordPolicy>.Value

XML full file reading C#

So I have a code that reads partially into an XML document, precenting me with the first block of results which is great, but I have a file containing multiple blocks of the same code & my program seems to quit after the first.
Here's the code:
string path = "data//handling.meta";
var doc = XDocument.Load(path);
var items = doc.Descendants("HandlingData").Elements("Item");//.ToArray();
var query = from i in items
select new
{
HandlingName = (string)i.Element("handlingName"),
Mass = (decimal?)i.Element("fMass").Attribute("value"),
InitialDragCoeff = (decimal?)i.Element("fInitialDragCoeff").Attribute("value"),
PercentSubmerged = (decimal?)i.Element("fPercentSubmerged").Attribute("value"),
DriveBiasFront = (decimal?)i.Element("fDriveBiasFront").Attribute("value"),
InitialDriveGears = i.Element("nInitialDriveGears").Attribute("value")
}
string test = ("{0} - {1}" + query.First().HandlingName + query.First().Mass + query.First().InitialDragCoeff);
richTextBox1.Text = test;
Here's the XML Document :
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<CHandlingDataMgr>
<HandlingData>
<Item type="CHandlingData">
<handlingName>Car1</handlingName>
<fMass value="140000.000000" />
<fInitialDragCoeff value="30.000000" />
<fPercentSubmerged value="85.000000" />
<vecCentreOfMassOffset x="0.000000" y="0.000000" z="0.000000" />
<vecInertiaMultiplier x="1.000000" y="1.000000" z="1.000000" />
<fDriveBiasFront value="1.000000" />
<nInitialDriveGears value="1" />
</Item>
<Item type="CHandlingData">
<handlingName>Car2</handlingName>
<fMass value="180000.000000" />
<fInitialDragCoeff value="7.800000" />
<fPercentSubmerged value="85.000000" />
<vecCentreOfMassOffset x="0.000000" y="0.000000" z="0.000000" />
<vecInertiaMultiplier x="1.000000" y="1.300000" z="1.500000" />
<fDriveBiasFront value="0.200000" />
<nInitialDriveGears value="6" />
</Item>
</HandlingData>
</CHandlingDataMgr>
As shown, there's multiple handling Name's. The CSharp code above does work, but only for the first block & I'm wondering how to make it read the same values from the different handling name.
I have tried :
if (query.First().HandlingName == "Car2")
{
MessageBox.Show("Car 2 found");
}
but since the message box never appeared, I assume this code doesn't read the hole file?
I'm hoping for output like this:
Name: Car 1
Mass: 140000.000000
InitialDragCoeff: 30.000000
Name: Car 2
Mass: 180000.000000
InitialDragCoeff: 7.800000
My problem in a 'nut shell' : Program does not see Car 2
Any help would be really appreciated, as I've tried many solutions & read many pages regarding XML today

You have:
string test = ("{0} - {1}" + query.First().HandlingName + query.First().Mass
+ query.First().InitialDragCoeff);
that's only ever going to get you the first element, because that's what you asked for.
I think you probably want to loop:
foreach (var item in query) {
var s = "{0} - {1}" + item.HandlingName + query.item.Mass
+ item.InitialDragCoeff
// …
}

Load string to LINQ classes and query it

I don't know too much about this subject yet, so I'm open to any suggestions that lead to my end goal...
I receive an XML string from a web service
I would like to load the string into a C# class capable of being used for LINQ
I would like to be able to extract an array of all "someentity" instances in the XML using LINQ with that class.
Here's some sample XML I made up with the someentity example:
<replydata>
<someentity>
<role id="1234" roletype="2" />
<history length="24" accessstr="http://someurl" />
</someentity>
<someentity>
<role id="1235" roletype="2" />
<history length="30" accessstr="http://someurl2" />
</someentity>
... keep repeating for a while
</replydata>
Is this possible, and if so, can someone provide a simple example or direct me to the right place to find one?

You can do it like this:
var responseString =
#"<replydata>
<someentity>
<role id=""1234"" roletype=""2"" />
<history length=""24"" accessstr=""http://someurl"" />
</someentity>
<someentity>
<role id=""1235"" roletype=""2"" />
<history length=""30"" accessstr=""http://someurl2"" />
</someentity>
</replydata>";
var response = XElement.Load(new StringReader(responseString));
var someentitys = response.Elements("someentity");
foreach(var e in someentitys) {
Console.WriteLine(
"Role: {0}, access: {1}"
, e.Element("role").Attribute("roletype")
, e.Element("history").Attribute("accessstr")
);
}

The class you're looking for here is XDocument
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.linq.xdocument.aspx
You can create an XDocument from an XML String using it's Parse() method and then use LINQ to query that document.
Here's an article that demos its LINQ Capabilities
http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/10/understanding-c-simple-linq-to.html

How can I merge XML files?

I have two xml files that both have the same schema and I would like to merge into a single xml file. Is there an easy way to do this?
For example,
<Root>
<LeafA>
<Item1 />
<Item2 />
</LeafA>
<LeafB>
<Item1 />
<Item2 />
</LeafB>
</Root>
+
<Root>
<LeafA>
<Item3 />
<Item4 />
</LeafA>
<LeafB>
<Item3 />
<Item4 />
</LeafB>
</Root>
= new file containing
<Root>
<LeafA>
<Item1 />
<Item2 />
<Item3 />
<Item4 />
</LeafA>
<LeafB>
<Item1 />
<Item2 />
<Item3 />
<Item4 />
</LeafB>
</Root>

"Automatic XML merge" sounds like a relatively simple requirement, but when you go into all the details, it gets complex pretty fast. Merge with c# or XSLT will be much easier for more specific task, like in the answer for EF model. Using tools to assist with a manual merge can also be an option (see this SO question).
For the reference (and to give an idea about complexity) here's an open-source example from Java world: XML merging made easy
Back to the original question. There are few big gray-ish areas in task specification: when 2 elements should be considered equivalent (have same name, matching selected or all attributes, or also have same position in the parent element); how to handle situation when original or merged XML have multiple equivalent elements etc.
The code below is assuming that
we only care about elements at the moment
elements are equivalent if element names, attribute names, and attribute values match
an element doesn't have multiple attributes with the same name
all equivalent elements from merged document will be combined with the first equivalent element in the source XML document.
.
// determine which elements we consider the same
//
private static bool AreEquivalent(XElement a, XElement b)
{
if(a.Name != b.Name) return false;
if(!a.HasAttributes && !b.HasAttributes) return true;
if(!a.HasAttributes || !b.HasAttributes) return false;
if(a.Attributes().Count() != b.Attributes().Count()) return false;
return a.Attributes().All(attA => b.Attributes(attA.Name)
.Count(attB => attB.Value == attA.Value) != 0);
}
// Merge "merged" document B into "source" A
//
private static void MergeElements(XElement parentA, XElement parentB)
{
// merge per-element content from parentB into parentA
//
foreach (XElement childB in parentB.DescendantNodes())
{
// merge childB with first equivalent childA
// equivalent childB1, childB2,.. will be combined
//
bool isMatchFound = false;
foreach (XElement childA in parentA.Descendants())
{
if (AreEquivalent(childA, childB))
{
MergeElements(childA, childB);
isMatchFound = true;
break;
}
}
// if there is no equivalent childA, add childB into parentA
//
if (!isMatchFound) parentA.Add(childB);
}
}
It will produce desired result with the original XML snippets, but if input XMLs are more complex and have duplicate elements, the result will be more... interesting:
public static void Test()
{
var a = XDocument.Parse(#"
<Root>
<LeafA>
<Item1 />
<Item2 />
<SubLeaf><X/></SubLeaf>
</LeafA>
<LeafB>
<Item1 />
<Item2 />
</LeafB>
</Root>");
var b = XDocument.Parse(#"
<Root>
<LeafB>
<Item5 />
<Item1 />
<Item6 />
</LeafB>
<LeafA Name=""X"">
<Item3 />
</LeafA>
<LeafA>
<Item3 />
</LeafA>
<LeafA>
<SubLeaf><Y/></SubLeaf>
</LeafA>
</Root>");
MergeElements(a.Root, b.Root);
Console.WriteLine("Merged document:\n{0}", a.Root);
}
Here's merged document showing how equivalent elements from document B were combined together:
<Root>
<LeafA>
<Item1 />
<Item2 />
<SubLeaf>
<X />
<Y />
</SubLeaf>
<Item3 />
</LeafA>
<LeafB>
<Item1 />
<Item2 />
<Item5 />
<Item6 />
</LeafB>
<LeafA Name="X">
<Item3 />
</LeafA>
</Root>

If the format is always exactly like this there is nothing wrong with this method:
Remove the last two lines from the first file and append the second files while removing the first two lines.
Have a look at the Linux commands head and tail which can delete the first and last two lines.

It's a simple XSLT transformation something like this (which you apply to document a.xml):
<xsl:variable name="docB" select="document('b.xml')"/>
<xsl:template match="Root">
<Root><xsl:apply-templates/></Root>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="Root/LeafA">
<xsl:copy-of select="*"/>
<xsl:copy-of select="$docB/Root/LeafA/*"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="Root/LeafB">
<xsl:copy-of select="*"/>
<xsl:copy-of select="$docB/Root/LeafB/*"/>
</xsl:template>

vimdiff file_a file_b as just one example
BeyondCompare is a favorite when I'm on windows http://www.scootersoftware.com/

I ended up using C# and created myself a script. I knew I could do it when I asked the question, but I wanted to know if there was a faster way to do this since I've never really worked with XML.
The script went along the lines of this:
var a = new XmlDocument();
a.Load(PathToFile1);
var b = new XmlDocument();
b.Load(PathToFile2);
MergeNodes(
a.SelectSingleNode(nodePath),
b.SelectSingleNode(nodePath).ChildNodes,
a);
a.Save(PathToFile1);
And MergeNodes() looked something like this:
private void MergeNodes(XmlNode parentNodeA, XmlNodeList childNodesB, XmlDocument parentA)
{
foreach (XmlNode oNode in childNodesB)
{
// Exclude container node
if (oNode.Name == "#comment") continue;
bool isFound = false;
string name = oNode.Attributes["Name"].Value;
foreach (XmlNode child in parentNodeA.ChildNodes)
{
if (child.Name == "#comment") continue;
// If node already exists and is unchanged, exit loop
if (child.OuterXml== oNode.OuterXml&& child.InnerXml == oNode.InnerXml)
{
isFound = true;
Console.WriteLine("Found::NoChanges::" + oNode.Name + "::" + name);
break;
}
// If node already exists but has been changed, replace it
if (child.Attributes["Name"].Value == name)
{
isFound = true;
Console.WriteLine("Found::Replaced::" + oNode.Name + "::" + name);
parentNodeA.ReplaceChild(parentA.ImportNode(oNode, true), child);
}
}
// If node does not exist, add it
if (!isFound)
{
Console.WriteLine("NotFound::Adding::" + oNode.Name + "::" + name);
parentNodeA.AppendChild(parentA.ImportNode(oNode, true));
}
}
}
Its not perfect - I have to manually specify the nodes I want merged, but it was quick and easy for me to put together and since I have almost no knowledge of XML, I'm happy :)
It actually works out better that it only merges the specified nodes since I'm using it to merge Entity Framework's edmx files, and I only really want to merge the SSDL, CDSL, and MSL nodes.

The way you could do it, is load a dataset with the xml and merge the datasets.
Dim dsFirst As New DataSet()
Dim dsMerge As New DataSet()
' Create new FileStream with which to read the schema.
Dim fsReadXmlFirst As New System.IO.FileStream(myXMLfileFirst, System.IO.FileMode.Open)
Dim fsReadXmlMerge As New System.IO.FileStream(myXMLfileMerge, System.IO.FileMode.Open)
Try
dsFirst.ReadXml(fsReadXmlFirst)
dsMerge.ReadXml(fsReadXmlMerge)
Dim str As String = "Merge Table(0) Row Count = " & dsMerge.Tables(0).Rows.Count
str = str & Chr(13) & "Merge Table(1) Row Count = " & dsMerge.Tables(1).Rows.Count
str = str & Chr(13) & "Merge Table(2) Row Count = " & dsMerge.Tables(2).Rows.Count
MsgBox(str)
dsMerge.Merge(dsFirst, True)
DataGridParent.DataSource = dsMerge
DataGridParent.DataMember = "rulefile"
DataGridChild.DataSource = dsMerge
DataGridChild.DataMember = "rule"
str = ""
str = "Merge Table(0) Row Count = " & dsMerge.Tables(0).Rows.Count
str = str & Chr(13) & "Merge Table(1) Row Count = " & dsMerge.Tables(1).Rows.Count
str = str & Chr(13) & "Merge Table(2) Row Count = " & dsMerge.Tables(2).Rows.Count
MsgBox(str)

reposting answer from https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=127848
Paste following into a perl script
use strict;
require 5.000;
use Data::Dumper;
use XML::Simple;
use Hash::Merge;
my $xmlFile1 = shift || die "XmlFile1\n";
my $xmlFile2 = shift || die "XmlFile2\n";
my %config1 = %{XMLin ($xmlFile1)};
my %config2 = %{XMLin ($xmlFile2)};
my $merger = Hash::Merge->new ('RIGHT_PRECEDENT');
my %newhash = %{ $merger->merge (\%config1, \%config2) };
# XMLout (\%newhash, outputfile => "newfile", xmldecl => 1, rootname => 'config');
print XMLout (\%newhash);