Getting all the XML paths from a XML file.

sana fatima

Hello Friends,
I am using the below XML file and trying to get all the distinct files from the XML tree. I want to store the distinct paths in a file.
The duplicate paths are eliminated as shown in the last part of the question.
Please help me get a c# code to do that.














******************************************
# of paths in the XML Tree are 10
/RootElement
/RootElement/FirstChild
/RootElement/SecondChild
/RootElement/SecondChild
/RootElement/FirstChild/Leaf1
/RootElement/FirstChild/Leaf2
/RootElement/SecondChild/Leaf3
/RootElement/SecondChild/Leaf4
/RootElement/SecondChild/Leaf3
/RootElement/SecondChild/Leaf5
******************************************
# of distinct paths in the XML Tree are 9
/RootElement
/RootElement/FirstChild
/RootElement/SecondChild
/RootElement/SecondChild
/RootElement/FirstChild/Leaf1
/RootElement/FirstChild/Leaf2
/RootElement/SecondChild/Leaf3
/RootElement/SecondChild/Leaf4
/RootElement/SecondChild/Leaf5
Thanks,
sana.

2 Replies

Know the answer? Post it — somebody with the same question will find it here.

sana fatima15y ago
Thanks Zoran.

What changes should i make to the code,
1) If i want to read the file from a specific location on the computer.(Like D:\programs\data.XML)
2) If i want all the paths(not unique) and store them in a text file to a specific location.
My XML file is huge.

Also i want to ignore the Attribute values with in the tag like "Key="ms/Jhon" in and the Value between the Tags, like "Data Mining" in Data Mining.

I am only looking for Elements information in the XML document and want to ignore the rest other things.

Please reply.
Zoran Horvat15y ago
Here is the source code which produces only unique paths in XML document:

using System;
using System.Xml;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace Test
{

    class Program
    {

        static XmlDocument LoadDocument()
        {
            string plain =
                @"












                  ";

            XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
            doc.LoadXml(plain);

            return doc;

        }

        static string[] ExtractUniquePaths(XmlDocument doc)
        {

            Stack elementStack = new Stack();
            Stack pathStack = new Stack();
            Dictionary uniquePaths = new Dictionary();

            elementStack.Push(doc.DocumentElement);
            pathStack.Push("/" + doc.DocumentElement.Name);

            while (elementStack.Count > 0)
            {

                XmlElement el = elementStack.Pop();
                string path = pathStack.Pop();

                if (!uniquePaths.ContainsKey(path))
                    uniquePaths.Add(path, el);

                foreach (XmlNode child in el.ChildNodes)
                    if (child is XmlElement)
                    {

                        XmlElement childElement = child as XmlElement;
                        string childPath = path + "/" + childElement.Name;

                        elementStack.Push(childElement);
                        pathStack.Push(childPath);

                    }

            }

            string[] paths = new string[uniquePaths.Count];
            uniquePaths.Keys.CopyTo(paths, 0);
            Array.Sort(paths);

            return paths;

        }

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {

            XmlDocument doc = LoadDocument();
            string[] paths = ExtractUniquePaths(doc);

            Console.WriteLine("{0} unique paths:", paths.Length);
            for (int i = 0; i < paths.Length; i++)
                Console.WriteLine(paths[i]);

        }
    }

}

XML document is traversed depth-first and all paths are stored in a dictionary so that no duplicates can occur.