Iterating through all nodes in XML file

Question

I want to iterate through all nodes in an XML file and print their names. What is the best way to do this? I am using .NET 2.0.

Answer 1

I think the fastest and simplest way would be to use an XmlReader, this will not require any recursion and minimal memory foot print.

Here is a simple example, for compactness I just used a simple string of course you can use a stream from a file etc.

  string xml = @"
    
      
        
      
      
        
        
      
    
    ";

  XmlReader rdr = XmlReader.Create(new System.IO.StringReader(xml));
  while (rdr.Read())
  {
    if (rdr.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element)
    {
      Console.WriteLine(rdr.LocalName);
    }
  }

The result of the above will be

parent
child
nested
child
other

A list of all the elements in the XML document.