How does one parse XML files?
It's very simple. I know these are standard methods, but you can create your own library to deal with that much better.
Here are some examples:
XmlDocument xmlDoc= new XmlDocument(); // Create an XML document object
xmlDoc.Load("yourXMLFile.xml"); // Load the XML document from the specified file
// Get elements
XmlNodeList girlAddress = xmlDoc.GetElementsByTagName("gAddress");
XmlNodeList girlAge = xmlDoc.GetElementsByTagName("gAge");
XmlNodeList girlCellPhoneNumber = xmlDoc.GetElementsByTagName("gPhone");
// Display the results
Console.WriteLine("Address: " + girlAddress[0].InnerText);
Console.WriteLine("Age: " + girlAge[0].InnerText);
Console.WriteLine("Phone Number: " + girlCellPhoneNumber[0].InnerText);
Also, there are some other methods to work with. For example, here. And I think there is no one best method to do this; you always need to choose it by yourself, what is most suitable for you.
I'd use LINQ to XML if you're in .NET 3.5 or higher.
Use a good XSD Schema to create a set of classes with xsd.exe and use an XmlSerializer
to create a object tree out of your XML and vice versa. If you have few restrictions on your model, you could even try to create a direct mapping between you model classes and the XML with the Xml*Attributes.
There is an introductory article about XML Serialisation on MSDN.
Performance tip: Constructing an XmlSerializer
is expensive. Keep a reference to your XmlSerializer
instance if you intend to parse/write multiple XML files.
If you're processing a large amount of data (many megabytes) then you want to be using XmlReader
to stream parse the XML.
Anything else (XPathNavigator
, XElement
, XmlDocument
and even XmlSerializer
if you keep the full generated object graph) will result in high memory usage and also a very slow load time.
Of course, if you need all the data in memory anyway, then you may not have much choice.