How to iterate through an XDocument, getting complete XML structure, object by object?
c#, linq-to-xml
Solution
The problem is that you're just printing out the elements as strings. You need to write code to convert an `XElement` of `<Person>` into your business object. Admittedly I'd expect the full XML to be written out instead - are you sure you're not printing out `XElement.Value` (which concatenates all the descendant text nodes)?
(I'm not sure of the answer to your second question - I suggest you ask it as a separate question here, so that we don't get a mixture of answers in one page.)
Problem
I have an `XmlDocument` which I can traverse with `XmlNode` or convert it to a `XDocument` and traverse it via LINQ. ``` <Dataset> <Person> <PayrollNumber>1234567</PayrollNumber> <Surname>Smith-Rodrigez</Surname> <Name>John-Jaime-Winston Junior</Name> <Skills> <Skill>ICP</Skill> <Skill>R</Skill> </Skills> <HomePhone>08 8888 8888</HomePhone> <MobilePhone>041 888 999</MobilePhone> <Email>curly@stooge.com</Email> </Person> <Person> <PayrollNumber>12342567</PayrollNumber> <Surname>Smith-Rodrigez</Surname> <Name>Steve</Name> <Skills> <Skill>Resus</Skill> <Skill>Air</Skill> </Skills> <HomePhone>08 8888 8888</HomePhone> <MobilePhone>041 888 999</MobilePhone> <Email>curly@stooge.com</Email> </Person> </Dataset> ``` Question 1 I want to convert the Person records/nodes in the XML to a business entity object (POCO). Therefore I have to iterate through a Person node at a time, and then parse the individual values. This last bit is interesting in itself, but first I have to get the actual Person records. The problem I have is that if I select by individual nodes (using say `XmlList` in `XmlDocoment`). I end up aggregating all fields by name. I am concerned to do this in case one of the person nodes is incomplete, or even missing and then I won't know which is missing when I pass through and aggregate the fields in to business objects. I will try and validate - see question 2. I realize this can be done through reflection but I am interested. I tried iterating through by Person object: Option 1: ``` foreach (XObject o in xDoc.Descendants("Person")) { Console.WriteLine("Name" + o); // [...] } ``` This gets me 2 person records (correct) each a stringified complete XML doc - formatted as an XML document. Just a subset of the above XML document. But how to split up the record now into separate nodes or fields - preferably as painless as possible? Option 2: ``` foreach (XElement element in xDoc.Descendants("Person")) { // [...] } ``` This gets me the XML nodes - values only - for each Person all in one string, e.g. 1234567Smith-RodrigezJohn-Jaime-Winston JuniorLevel 5, City Central Tower 2, 121 King William StNorth Adelaide 5000ICPR08 8888 8888041 888 999111111curly@stooge.comE Again, not much use. Question 2 I can validate an `XDocument` quite easily, there are some good examples on MSDN, but I'd like to know how can I flag a wrong record. Ideally, I'd like to be able to filter the good records out to a new `XDocument` on the fly leaving the old ones behind. Is this possible?