Parse XDocument without having to keep specifying the default namespace

Question

I have some XML data (similar to the sample below) and I want to read the values in code.

Why am I forced to specify the default namespace to access each element? I woul

Answer 1

Note that the element Receipts is also in namespace http://www.secretsonline.gov.uk/secrets, so the XNamespace would also be required for the access to the element:

XElement MessageBody = xDoc.Element(ns + "Receipts");

As an alternative to using namespaces note that you can use "namespace agnostic" xpath using local-name() and namespace-uri(), e.g.

/*[local-name()='SomeElement' and namespace-uri()='somexmlns']

If you omit the namespace-uri predicate:

/*[local-name()='SomeElement']

Would match ns1:SomeElement and ns2:SomeElement etc. IMO I would always prefer XNamespace where possible, and the use-cases for namespace-agnostic xpath are quite limited, e.g. for parsing of specific elements in documents with unknown schemas (e.g. within a service bus), or best-effort parsing of documents where the namespace can change (e.g. future proofing, where the xmlns changes to match a new version of the document schema)