How to check if text node of xml file has a child node inside and get all data from them?

Question

I have xml file. This is just piece of that file

1    <mainTerm>
2      <title> Abandonment </title>
3      <see> Maltreatment </see>
4    </mainTerm>
5    <mainTerm>
6      <title> Abasia <nemod>(-astasia) (hysterical) </nemod></title>
7      <code>F44.4</code>
8    </mainTerm>

I have a lot of <mainTerm> and i loop through all of them. I copy all data of elements, but when i reach line 6, i got the problem. How to copy all that content? I need get at the end string, that will looks like "Abasia (-astasia) (hysterical)".

That's the piece of my app that work with that file

     List<string> nodes = new List<string>();

            //Create XmlReaderSettings object
            XmlReaderSettings settings = new XmlReaderSettings();
            settings.IgnoreWhitespace = true;
            settings.IgnoreComments = true;

            //Create XmlReader object
            XmlReader xmlIn = XmlReader.Create(path, settings);

            Excel.Application xlApp;
            Excel.Workbook xlWorkBook;
            Excel.Worksheet xlWorkSheet;
            object misValue = System.Reflection.Missing.Value;

            xlApp = new Excel.Application();
            xlWorkBook = xlApp.Workbooks.Add(misValue);
if (xmlIn.ReadToDescendant("mainTerm"))
{
 do
 {
   xmlIn.ReadStartElement("mainTerm");                                                  

   nodes.Add(xmlIn.ReadElementContentAsString());                          

   nodes.Add(xmlIn.ReadElementContentAsString());                          

 } while (xmlIn.ReadToNextSibling("mainTerm"));
}

Answer 1

You could use LINQ2XML. Just wrap your xml structure within a root node and fetch all title elements like this:

var xmlSrc = @"<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""UTF-8""?><xml><mainTerm>
  <title> Abandonment </title>
  <see> Maltreatment </see>
</mainTerm>
<mainTerm>
  <title> Abasia <nemod>(-astasia) (hysterical) </nemod></title>
  <code>F44.4</code>
</mainTerm></xml>";

var xml = XDocument.Parse(xmlSrc);
var mainTerms = xml.Root.Elements("mainTerm").ToList();
var titles = mainTerms.Elements("title").ToList();
foreach (var title in titles)
{
    System.Console.WriteLine(title.Value);
}

The output is:

Abandonment 
Abasia (-astasia) (hysterical) 

This is IMHO much easier than XPath and XmlReader.

---

Using the Descendants function your mainTerm element does not need to be the root element:

var mainTerms = xml.Root.Descendants("mainTerm").ToList();

This line delivers all mainTerm's at any level from the XML document!