XmlReader on node without value

Question

I'm trying to extract data from provided xml and add that to object using XmlReader , but I noticed on nodes without value, I get "\\n " instead.

Example xml:

<Items>
 <Item>
  <NodeA>Some Value</NodeA>
  <NodeB>N</NodeB>
  <NodeC />
 </Item>
 <Item>
  ...
 </Item>
</Items>

Part of my modified C#:

while (sub_reader.ReadToFollowing("Item"))
{
    var item = new Item();

    sub_reader.ReadToFollowing("NodeA");
    sub_reader.Read();
    item.NodeA = sub_reader.Value;

    sub_reader.ReadToFollowing("NodeB");
    sub_reader.Read();
    item.NodeB = sub_reader.Value;

    sub_reader.ReadToFollowing("NodeC");
    sub_reader.Read();
    item.NodeC = sub_reader.Value;          //This return "\n    "

    this.Items.Add(item);
}

Is there any function/convenient way that work the above but return null or empty string when <NodeC /> happens? The real xml is much larger and I don't want to do if else on each of them.

Any suggestion is appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

Using XDocument <NodeC/> return string.Empty . Here dotNetFiddle

     string xml = @"<Items>
<Item>
  <NodeA>Some Value</NodeA>
  <NodeB>N</NodeB>
  <NodeC />
 </Item>
 <Item>
  <NodeA>Some 2223Value</NodeA>
  <NodeB>2223N</NodeB>
  <NodeC>12344</NodeC>
 </Item>
</Items>";

        XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(xml);

        var result = doc.Root.Descendants("NodeC");

        foreach(var item in result)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(item.Value);
        }

If you want to deserialize the XDocument to some object you can check this answer: How do I deserialize XML into an object using a constructor that takes an XDocument?

public static MyClass FromXml (XDocument xd)
{
   XmlSerializer s = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyClass));
   return (MyClass)s.Deserialize(xd.CreateReader());
}

Answer 2

Rather than calling Read followed by taking Value property, use ReadElementContentAsString method:

sub_reader.ReadToFollowing("NodeA");
item.NodeA = sub_reader.ReadElementContentAsString();

sub_reader.ReadToFollowing("NodeB");
item.NodeB = sub_reader.ReadElementContentAsString();

sub_reader.ReadToFollowing("NodeC");
item.NodeC = sub_reader.ReadElementContentAsString();