How to read XML documents using the XPathDocument class?

The XPathDocument class is based on a DOM parsing approach. The data is read directly from the DOM object of the XML.

Say we have the following XML located on your computer at C:\students.xml

<Students>

                <Student>

                <Name>Elena</Name>

                <Id>405</Id>

</Student>

                <Student>

                <Name>John</Name>

                <Id>406</Id>

</Student>

</Students>

In order to read the XML above using XPathDocument, checkout the following piece of code:

using System;

using System.IO;using System.Xml;

using System.Xml.XPath;

public partial class Working_With_XPathDocument : System.Web.UI.Page

{

  int i;

  string str;

  protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

  {

    string strFile = Path.Combine("C:\", "students.xml");

    XPathDocument xmldoc = new XPathDocument(strFile);

    XPathNavigator nav = xmldoc.CreateNavigator();

    foreach (XPathNavigator xpnav in nav.Select("students/student"))

    {

    i++;

    str += "<tr class='alt" + (i % 2) + "'>" + "<td>" + xpnav.SelectSingleNode("@name").Value;

    str +=  "</td><td>" + xpnav.SelectSingleNode("Id").Value + "</td></tr>";

    }

    string th = "<th>Name</th><th>Id</th>";

    div1.InnerHtml = "<table cellspacing='0' cellpadding='3'>" + th + tr + "</table>";

  }

}

The XPathNavigator is an object used to navigate across the XML Document.

If you are aware of the XPath Query Language, you may write programs to directly query XML documents

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