Avoid Try n Catch when searching for XML nodes in XDocument

Question

Here is a method to check if some specific nodes exist or not in XDocument files.

Obviously based on some documents it may encounter some NullExceptions . (in line 5,6)

What way you recommend, how to change this piece of code to avoid using Try/Catch and not getting an exception?

            var xContents = xDocument.Root.Descendants("Content");
            if (xContents.Any())
            {
                doesIncludeThat =
                   xContents.Any(e => e.HasAttributes && e.Name == "Content"
                            && e.Attribute("Include").Value == @"Happy New Year");
             ...}}}

Answer 1

Instead of using e.Attribute(name).Value which will give a NullReferenceException if the attribute is not present, you can do one of these things which both will return null in this case:

e.Attribute(name)?.Value

or

(string)e.Attribute(name)

The latter makes use of one of the conversion (cast) operators defined in XAttribute, which also return null if the attribute does not exist.