How To Select XML Nodes by Name

How to find nodes in an XML file you can use XPath expressions. Method XmlNode.Selec­tNodes returns a list of nodes selected by the XPath string. Method XmlNode.Selec­tSingleNode finds the first node that matches the XPath string.

Suppose we have this XML file.

<Names>
    <Name>
        <FirstName>John</FirstName>
        <LastName>Smith</LastName>
    </Name>
    <Name>
        <FirstName>James</FirstName>
        <LastName>White</LastName>
    </Name>
</Names>

To get all nodes to use XPath expression /Names/Name. The first slash means that the node must be a root node. SelectNodes method returns collection XmlNodeList which will contain the nodes. To get the value of sub-node you can simply index XmlNode with the node name: xmlNode["FirstName"].InnerText. See the example below.

XmlDocument xml = new XmlDocument();
xml.LoadXml(myXmlString); // suppose that myXmlString contains "<Names>...</Names>"

XmlNodeList xnList = xml.SelectNodes("/Names/Name");
foreach (XmlNode xn in xnList)
{
  string firstName = xn["FirstName"].InnerText;
  string lastName = xn["LastName"].InnerText;
  Console.WriteLine("Name: {0} {1}", firstName, lastName);
}