Convert Xml document to C# Dictionary

Question

I make a request to a service and receive an xml response as shown below. However, I'm trying to store the response values in a Dictionary (or store the values returned in variables) and I can't seem to make it work.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

xml response received:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ncresponse NCERRORPLUS="!" BRAND="ABC" PM="CC" currency="GBP" amount="10" STATUS="9" ACCEPTANCE="test123" NCERROR="0" NCSTATUS="0" PAYID="39409494" orderID="92E5CE91">
</ncresponse>

c# code:

        try
        {
            // Write data
            using (Stream postStream = request.GetRequestStream())
            {
                postStream.Write(byteData, 0, byteData.Length);
            }

            // Get response
            Dictionary<string, string> respValues = new Dictionary<string, string>();
            try
            {
                string body = String.Empty;

                using (HttpWebResponse response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse)
                {
                    // Get the response stream
                    StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream(), Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1"));
                    body += reader.ReadToEnd();
                }

                XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
                xmlDoc.LoadXml(body);

                XmlNodeList list = xmlDoc.GetElementsByTagName("ncresponse");
                string xmlResponse = list[0].InnerText;
            }
            catch (WebException wex)
            {
                throw;
            }

Answer 1

Use this:

using System.Xml.Linq;  // required namespace for linq-to-xml
/* ... get xml into 'body' string */
XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(body);

to load the XML file into an XDocument object.

Then, you can use Linq-to-XML to parse the XML and ToDictionary extension method to create a key / value pair for each attribue of the XML:

 var output = doc.Element("ncresponse")
                 .Attributes()          
                 .Select(c => new {
                     Key = c.Name,
                     Value = c.Value
                  })
                 .ToDictionary(k => k.Key, v => v.Value);

It seems I overcomplicated things (credit goes to @KyleW). This:

 var output = doc.Element("ncresponse")
                 .Attributes()          
                 .ToDictionary(k => k.Name, v => v.Value);

is equivalent to the inital linq query. Select is only necessary only in case some pre-processing of the values placed in the dictionary is required.

Ouput:

[0] = {[NCERRORPLUS, !]}
[1] = {[BRAND, ABC]}
[2] = {[PM, CC]}
... etc