How can I maintain the treestructure of my xml-file in the code and access the "subtags"?

Question

Hey have a little problem, I'm having a xml-file structured like this:

<cars>
  <car name="audi" id="123">
    <specs fuel="gas"/>
    <specs horsepower="150"/>
  </car>
  <car name="tesla" id="456">
    <specs fuel="electric"/>
    <specs horsepower="600"/>
  </car>
</cars

I am trying to read all the data and maintain the treestructure from the xml in the code so that I can display the car that I want lateron. Therefore I used an ObservableCollection. I tried it like this:

        XElement data = XElement.Load(path);

        IEnumerable<XElement> elements = data.Elements().Elements();

        XmlData = new ObservableCollection<XElement>();

        foreach(var item in elements)
        {
            XmlData.Add(item);
        }

With this method it doesn't add them in the collection. How can I get the different nodes from the loaded XElements and store them in an ObservableCollection? Or is there a much easier way to do this? Thanks already :)

Answer 1

I like putting results into a datatable which you can always bind to an observable view. I used xml linq to parse the xml

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Data;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Linq;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        const string FILENAME = @"c:\temp\test.xml";
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            DataTable dt = new DataTable();
            dt.Columns.Add("Name", typeof(string));
            dt.Columns.Add("ID", typeof(int));
            dt.Columns.Add("Fuel", typeof(string));
            dt.Columns.Add("Horsepower", typeof(int));

            XDocument doc = XDocument.Load(FILENAME);

            foreach (XElement car in doc.Descendants("car"))
            {
                DataRow newRow = dt.Rows.Add();
                newRow["Name"] = (string)car.Attribute("name");
                newRow["ID"] = (int)car.Attribute("id");
                newRow["Fuel"] = car.Descendants("specs")
                    .Where(x => x.Attribute("fuel") != null)
                    .Select(x => (string)x.Attribute("fuel"))
                    .FirstOrDefault();
                newRow["Horsepower"] = car.Descendants("specs")
                    .Where(x => x.Attribute("horsepower") != null)
                    .Select(x => (string)x.Attribute("horsepower"))
                    .FirstOrDefault();
            }

        }
    }
}