Why isn't this removing the XML node properly?

Question

My XML code is like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Tabel>
  <Member>
    <Naam>Cruciatum</Naam>
    <Kills>1000</Kills>
    <Deaths>10</Deaths>
    <KD>100</KD>
  </Member>
  <Member>
    <Naam>Ghostbullet93</Naam>
    <Kills>10</Kills>
    <Deaths>1</Deaths>
    <KD>10</KD>
  </Member>
  <Member>
    <Naam>test</Naam>
    <Kills>123</Kills>
    <Deaths>11</Deaths>
    <KD>11</KD>
  </Member>
</Tabel>

After processing, the XML should end up looking like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Tabel>
  <Member>
    <Naam>Cruciatum</Naam>
    <Kills>1000</Kills>
    <Deaths>10</Deaths>
    <KD>100</KD>
  </Member>
  <Member>
    <Naam>Ghostbullet93</Naam>
    <Kills>10</Kills>
    <Deaths>1</Deaths>
    <KD>10</KD>
  </Member>
</Tabel>

After a bit of searching I came up with this code.

Apparently it worked for others, yet it just won't work for me at all.

Private Sub btnDel_Click(sender As System.Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnDel.Click
        playername = lstmembers.SelectedItem.ToString
        If MsgBox("Ben je zeker dat je " & playername & " wil verwijderen?", MsgBoxStyle.YesNo, "Confirmatie") = MsgBoxResult.Yes Then
            Dim xmldoc As New XmlDocument()
            xmldoc.load("C:\members.xml")
            Dim node As XmlNode = xmldoc.SelectSingleNode("Root/Naam[. = '" & playername & "']")
            If node IsNot Nothing Then
                node.ParentNode.RemoveChild(node)
                xmldoc.Save("C:\members.xml")
            End If
            'reload list
            loadfile()
        End If
    End Sub

I don't get any exceptions, so the code must be right for something, just not for what I need apparently...

I hope you can see where I made my mistake.

Answer 1

Look at your XPath expression:

"Root/Naam[. = '" & playername & "']"

That's expecting an element called Root. Your element is actually called Member, assuming you've really given us a representative file. You may need Tabel/Member/Naam - I can't remember whether using XPath on a document implicitly starts at the document root element or not.

I haven't checked the rest of your code, but it's at least worth trying that first. It looks like your code will actually just remove the Naam element, by the way - I think you may want:

node.ParentNode.ParentNode.RemoveChild(node.ParentNode)

(Or extract node.ParentNode to a separate local variable, of course.)

Personally I would use LINQ to XML if at all possible - it would make life simpler - but that's a different matter.