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How to parse a string (LINQ to XML)

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This article shows how to parse a string to create an XML tree in C# and in Visual Basic.

Example

The following C# code shows how to parse an XML string:

C# 
XElement contacts = XElement.Parse(
    @"<Contacts>
        <Contact>
            <Name>Patrick Hines</Name>
            <Phone Type=""home"">206-555-0144</Phone>
            <Phone Type=""work"">425-555-0145</Phone>
            <Address>
            <Street1>123 Main St</Street1>
            <City>Mercer Island</City>
            <State>WA</State>
            <Postal>68042</Postal>
            </Address>
            <NetWorth>10</NetWorth>
        </Contact>
        <Contact>
            <Name>Gretchen Rivas</Name>
            <Phone Type=""mobile"">206-555-0163</Phone>
            <Address>
            <Street1>123 Main St</Street1>
            <City>Mercer Island</City>
            <State>WA</State>
            <Postal>68042</Postal>
            </Address>
            <NetWorth>11</NetWorth>
        </Contact>
    </Contacts>");
Console.WriteLine(contacts);

You can parse a string in Visual Basic in a similar manner. However, it's more efficient to use XML literals, as shown in following code, because XML literals don't suffer from the same performance penalties as parsing XML from a string.

By using XML literals, you can just copy and paste your XML into your Visual Basic program.

Note

Parsing text or loading an XML document from a text file is less efficient than functional construction. If you're initializing an XML tree from code, it takes less processor time to use functional construction than to parse text.

VB 
Dim contacts as XElement = _
    <Contacts>
        <Contact>
            <Name>Patrick Hines</Name>
            <Phone Type="home">206-555-0144</Phone>
            <Phone Type="work">425-555-0145</Phone>
            <Address>
            <Street1>123 Main St</Street1>
            <City>Mercer Island</City>
            <State>WA</State>
            <Postal>68042</Postal>
            </Address>
            <NetWorth>10</NetWorth>
        </Contact>
        <Contact>
            <Name>Gretchen Rivas</Name>
            <Phone Type="mobile">206-555-0163</Phone>
            <Address>
            <Street1>123 Main St</Street1>
            <City>Mercer Island</City>
            <State>WA</State>
            <Postal>68042</Postal>
            </Address>
            <NetWorth>11</NetWorth>
        </Contact>
    </Contacts>

The root Contacts node has two Contact nodes. To access some specific data in your parsed XML, use the XElement.Elements() method, which in this case returns the child elements of the root Contacts node. The following example prints the first Contact node to the console:

C# 
List<XElement> contactNodes = contacts.Elements("Contact").ToList();
Console.WriteLine(contactNodes[0]);

See also