Using LINQ to XML to get a list of element values is not working

Question

I have a XML file with data like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<PublisherDatabase xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" Version="4" xmlns="http://www.publictalksoftware.co.uk/msa">
  <Publishers>
    <Publisher>
      <Name>Mr Happy</Name>
    </Publisher>
    <Publisher>
      <Name>Mr Sad</Name>
    </Publisher>
  </Publishers>
</PublisherDatabase>

That is a snippet, reduced to bare bones.

Now, I am trying to use LINQ to XML to get a List<string> of all the Name values.

This returns a list of 0 items:

XDocument xmlDoc = XDocument.Load(publisherDataPath);
var list = xmlDoc.Root.Elements("Publishers").Elements("Name")
                              .Select(element => element.Value)
                              .ToList();
Console.WriteLine(list.ToString());

What is my mistake? Then I tried:

var list = xmlDoc.Root.Elements("Publishers").Elements("Publisher").Elements("Name")
       .Select(element => element.Value)
       .ToList();
Console.WriteLine(list.ToString());

Still ends up with 0.

Answer 1

Those xml elements belong to the http://www.publictalksoftware.co.uk/msa xml namespace.

You have to specify that one in your LINQ query for each element.

XNamespace ns = "http://www.publictalksoftware.co.uk/msa";
var list = xmlDoc.Root.Elements(ns + "Publishers").Elements(ns + "Publisher").Elements(ns + "Name")
    .Select(element => element.Value)
    .ToList();