Reading XML String

  • Thread starter Thread starter jimmy
  • Start date Start date
J

jimmy

Hi,

I have an XML string that has been returned using a WebRequest object
that i now need extract some data from. Some sample data is shown
below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ISBNdb server_time="2005-02-25T23:03:41">
<BookList total_results="1" page_size="10" page_number="1"
shown_results="1">
<BookData book_id="somebook" isbn="0123456789">
<Title>Interesting Book</Title>
<TitleLong>Interesting Book: Read it or else..</TitleLong>
<AuthorsText>John Doe</AuthorsText>
<PublisherText>Acme Publishing</PublisherText>
</BookData>
</BookList>
</ISBNdb>

I now need to extract the 'Title', 'AuthorsText' and 'PublisherText'
from it. Can anyone point me in the right direction because all the
samples ive seen are for reading xml files and not a string.

Thanks

James
 
jimmy said:
I now need to extract the 'Title', 'AuthorsText' and 'PublisherText'
from it. Can anyone point me in the right direction because all the
samples ive seen are for reading xml files and not a string.
Click to expand...

All XML APIs (like XmlReader or XPathDocument or XmlDocument) can read
from a file or from a string, you can simply provide a StringReader over
your string with XML.

Here is an example reading out the stuff using XPathNavigator, assuming
Xml is your string variable

Dim Doc As XPathDocument = New XPathDocument(New StringReader(Xml))
Dim Navigator As XPathNavigator = Doc.CreateNavigator()
Dim NodeIterator As XPathNodeIterator =
Navigator.Select("ISBNdb/BookList/BookData")
While NodeIterator.MoveNext()
Console.WriteLine("Book ISBN: {0}:",
NodeIterator.Current.GetAttribute("isbn", ""))
Console.WriteLine("Title: {0}",
NodeIterator.Current.SelectSingleNode("Title").Value)
Console.WriteLine("Author: {0}",
NodeIterator.Current.SelectSingleNode("AuthorsText").Value)
Console.WriteLine("Publisher: {0}",
NodeIterator.Current.SelectSingleNode("PublisherText").Value)
Console.WriteLine()
End While
 
Here is an example reading out the stuff using XPathNavigator, assuming
Xml is your string variable
Click to expand...

Altough the result is the same, I find personally xmlDocument more
straightforward way, for example

Dim document As New System.Xml.XmlDocument
document.LoadXml(xml) 'assuming that xml contains your xml document

Dim path As String = "ISBNdb/BookList/BookData[@book_id=""somebook""]"
Dim bookElement As System.Xml.XmlElement =
CType(document.SelectSingleNode(path), Xml.XmlElement)

Console.WriteLine("Book isbn: " & bookElement.GetAttribute("isbn")
Console.WriteLine("Title: " & bookElement.SelectSingleNode("Title").Value)
Console.WriteLine("Author: " &
bookElement.SelectSingleNode("AuthorsText").Value)
etc.
 
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