C# Get "value" from an xml file using xpath

October 6, 2022

I want to print the "value" Computer into my console. but I’m unable to find proper resources as I don’t know the terminology that is needed to search, like nodes, child, values, ecc..

My current code:

XDocument xml = XDocument.Load(Localization);
XElement pattern = xml.XPathSelectElement("/resources/string[@key=\"Example\"]");

Xml:

<resources xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
   <string key="Example">Computer</string>
</resources>

What can I do to print that value?

>Solution :

You are getting an XElement object from xml.XPathSelectElement(). In The XElement class, there is a property called Value which will return the enclosing text (string) within an element.

The following code will print out what you desired:

XDocument xml = XDocument.Load(Localization);
XElement pattern = xml.XPathSelectElement("/resources/string[@key=\"Example\"]");

Console.WriteLine(pattern.Value);

Console output:

Computer

Terminology

XML/HTML can be viewed as a tree of nodes (element) and children of nodes.

Attribution: W3 Schools

Document is the parent of Root Element
Root Element is a child of Document
The ancestors of <head> are <html> and Document (think family tree)
The descendants of Document are all the children nodes including nested children
Siblings are nodes on the same level. For example, <head> is a sibling to <body>