Retrieve list of xml tag of child nodes in linQ to xml

Question

I'm trying to get all the list of the different child nodes (not starting from root) of a loaded XML into a list of strings, I had done using System.Xml library but I want to write the same code with LINQ to XML too. I had found a code that helped me a lot but it starts from Root, here is the code:

List<string> nodesNames = new List<string>();
XDocument xdoc1 = XDocument.Load(destinationPath);
XElement root = xdoc1.Document.Root;

foreach (var name in root.DescendantNodes().OfType<XElement>()
        .Select(x => x.Name).Distinct())
{
        if (!nodesNames.Contains(name.ToString()))
        nodesNames.Add(name.ToString());
}

With this, I get the list of all child nodes + the parent node too, which I don't want to use.FirstChild or to delete manually from the list because I want a TOTALLY dynamic code and I have in input the parent node passed by the user.

For a better comprehension, this is the code that working for me but with System.Xml:

List<string> nodesNames = new List<string>();
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load(destinationPath);
XmlNodeList elemList = doc.GetElementsByTagName(inputParentNode);

for (int i = 0; i < elemList.Count; i++)
{
        XmlNodeList cnList = (elemList[i].ChildNodes);
        for (int j = 0; j < cnList.Count; j++)
        {
                string name = cnList[j].Name;
                if (!nodesNames.Contains(name))
                        nodesNames.Add(name);
        }
}

And this is an easy sample of the XML:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<parentlist>
        <parent>
                <firstchild>someValue</firstchild>
                <secondchild>someValue</secondchild>
        </parent>
        <parent>
                <firstchild>someValue</firstchild>
                <secondchild>someValue</secondchild>
                <thirdchild>someValue</thirdchild>
        </parent>
</parentlist>

To resume:

• in the first case i obtain nodesNames = ["parent", "firstchild", "secondchild", "thirdchild"]
• in the second case i obtain nodesNames = ["firstchild", "secondchild", "thirdchild"]

I just want to fix the first to obtain the same result as the second.

Answer 1

Try following :

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Linq;

namespace ConsoleApplication2
{
    class Program
    {
        const string FILENAME = @"c:\temp\test.xml";
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
           XDocument doc = XDocument.Load(FILENAME);
           XElement parentlist= doc.Root;
           List<string> descendents = parentlist.Descendants().Where(x => x.HasElements).Select(x => string.Join(",", x.Name.LocalName, string.Join(",", x.Elements().Select(y => y.Name.LocalName)))).ToList();


        }
    }
}