How to get XML nodes InnerText without concatenation and using Xml.Linq in C#?

Question

I already checked several questions posted at Stackoverflow but seems that none of them can solve my situation which i can try to explain.

I have next XML file into disk ( commands.xml ) with following contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<categories>
  <category name="Standard">
    <cmd name="pwd">
      <description>Get working dir.</description>
      <code>echo getcwd();</code>
    </cmd>
    <cmd name="cat">
      <description>Reads a file.</description>
      <code>$fh = fopen("&lt;&lt;cmd&gt;&gt;", 'r') or die ("Cant open file");
$lines = fread($fh, filesize("&lt;&lt;cmd&gt;&gt;"));
echo "$lines";
fclose($fh);</code>
    </cmd>
    </category>
</categories>

I'm trying to read the child-node <code> of <cmd name="cat"> , as you can see it contains several lines.

My actual code is:

            var xml = XElement.Load("commands.xml");
            var query = xml.Descendants()
                .Where(x => x.Name == "category" && x.Attribute("name").Value == "Standard")
                .Descendants()
                .Where(x => x.Name == "cmd" && x.Attribute("name").Value == "cat");

            var first_query_result = query.FirstOrDefault();
            if (first_query_result != null)
            {
                textBox_cmd_code_editor.Text = first_query_result.Descendants("code").Single().Value;
            }

The problem is that the text is concatenated and line jumps ( \\r\\n ) are stripped. I need to get the text as is, without any concatenation or reformatting, but don't know how to achieve it.

I tryed multiple options but couldn't find a solution.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I think it may have something to do with the object you're placing the text into (the textBox_cmd_code_editor.Text).

I placed your output into a normal string variable and the newlines were preserved.

Try placing the output into a normal string variable and then manipulating it from there. It's likely your target object just don't support newlines, ect.

Edit: What you need is to convert the linebreaks to Environment.NewLine, as follows:

            string originalString;
        string convertedString;
        if (first_query_result != null)
        {
            originalString = first_query_result.Descendants("code").Single().Value;
            convertedString = Regex.Replace(originalString, @"\r\n?|\n", Environment.NewLine);
            textBox1.Text = convertedString;
        }