Find through multiple attributes in XML

Question

I'm trying to search multiple attributes in XML :

<APIS>
  <API Key="00001">
    <field Username="username1" UserPassword="password1" FileName="Filename1.xml"/>
    <field Username="username2" UserPassword="password2" FileName="Filename2.xml"/>
    <field Username="username3" UserPassword="password3" FileName="Filename3.xml"/>
  </API>
</APIS>

I need to check if in the "field" the Username AND UserPassword values are both what I am comparing with my Dataset values, is there a way where I can check multiple attributes (AND condition) without writing my own logic of using Flags and breaking out of loops.

Is there a built in function of XMLDoc that does it? Any help would be appreciated!

Answer 1

To search for what you want in the snippet of XML you provided, you would need the following XPath expression:

/APIS/API/field[@Username='username1' and @UserPassword='password1']

This would either return something, if user name and password match - or not if they don't.

Of couse the XPath expression is just a string - you can build it dynamically with values that were entered into a form field, for example.

If you tell what language/environment you are in, code samples posted here will likely get more specific.

This is a way to do it in C# (VB.NET is analogous):

// make sure the following line is included in your class
using System.Xml;

XmlDocument xmldoc = new XmlDocument();
xmldoc.Load("your XML string or file");

string xpath = "/APIS/API/field[@Username='{0}' and @UserPassword='{1}']";
string username = "username1";
string password = "password1";

xpath = String.Format(xpath, username, password);
XmlNode userNode = xmldoc.SelectSingleNode(xpath);

if (userNode != null)
{
  // found something with given user name and password
}
else
{
  // username or password incorrect
}

Be aware that neither user names nor passwords can contain single quotes, or the above example will fail. Here is some info on this peculiarity.

There is also a How-To from Microsoft available: HOW TO: Use the System.Xml.XmlDocument Class to Execute XPath Queries in Visual C# .NET