XML - How to grab child nodes in single node and not whole document?

Question

Been looking around for an answer and cant find anything - Im quite new so maybe Im not hitting up the right key words?

This is a sample of the XML I am working with

<database>
    <book>
        <title>A</title>
        <author>
            <name>1</name>
        </author>
    </book>
    <book>
        <title>B</title>
        <author>
             <name>2</name>
        </author>
        <author>
             <name>3</name>
        </author>
        <author>
             <name>4</name>
        </author>
        <author>
             <name>5</name>
        </author>
    </book>
</database>

I'm trying to use C# XmlDocument to grab for book A author 1 and then for book B author 2, 3, 4, 5

So far the code I am working with is cycling through ALL the authors so I am getting book A author 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

The code I have so far is as follows roughly

    XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
    doc.Load("myxmlfile");
    XmlNode root = doc.SelectSingleNode("database");
    XmlNodeList nodelist = root.SelectNodes("book");
 
    foreach (XmlNode n in nodelist)
    {
        XmlNodeList authors = root.SelectNodes(".//author");
        book.authorstring = "";
        foreach (XmlNode author in authors)
        {
           book.authorstring = book.authorstring+author.SelectSingleNode("name").InnerText + ", ";
        }
    }

I read some where that if I use " . " before the " // " that it would "anchor" to the current node but it doesn't seem to be working and is cycling through all the nodes

What am I doing wrong or missing?

Answer 1

If i understand you correctly your error is in this line :

XmlNodeList authors = root.SelectNodes(".//author");

it should be

XmlNodeList authors = n.SelectNodes(".//author");