How to: Find Descendants of a Child Element (XPath-LINQ to XML)

This topic shows how to get the descendant elements of a child element with a particular name.

The XPath expression is:

./Paragraph//Text/text()

Example

This example simulates the problems of extracting text from an XML representation of a word processing document. It first selects all Paragraph elements, and then it selects all Text descendant elements of each Paragraph element. This doesn't select the descendant Text elements of the Comment element.

XElement root = XElement.Parse(
@"<Root>
  <Paragraph>
    <Text>This is the start of</Text>
  </Paragraph>
  <Comment>
    <Text>This comment is not part of the paragraph text.</Text>
  </Comment>
  <Paragraph>
    <Annotation Emphasis='true'>
      <Text> a sentence.</Text>
    </Annotation>
  </Paragraph>
  <Paragraph>
    <Text>  This is a second sentence.</Text>
  </Paragraph>
</Root>");

// LINQ to XML query
string str1 =
    root
    .Elements("Paragraph")
    .Descendants("Text")
    .Select(s => s.Value)
    .Aggregate(
        new StringBuilder(),
        (s, i) => s.Append(i),
        s => s.ToString()
    );

// XPath expression
string str2 =
    ((IEnumerable)root.XPathEvaluate("./Paragraph//Text/text()"))
    .Cast<XText>()
    .Select(s => s.Value)
    .Aggregate(
        new StringBuilder(),
        (s, i) => s.Append(i),
        s => s.ToString()
    );

if (str1 == str2)
    Console.WriteLine("Results are identical");
else
    Console.WriteLine("Results differ");
Console.WriteLine(str2);

Dim root As XElement = _
    <Root>
        <Paragraph>
            <Text>This is the start of</Text>
        </Paragraph>
        <Comment>
            <Text>This comment is not part of the paragraph text.</Text>
        </Comment>
        <Paragraph>
            <Annotation Emphasis='true'>
                <Text> a sentence.</Text>
            </Annotation>
        </Paragraph>
        <Paragraph>
            <Text>  This is a second sentence.</Text>
        </Paragraph>
    </Root>

' LINQ to XML query
Dim str1 As String = _
    root.<Paragraph>...<Text>.Select(Function(ByVal s) s.Value). _
    Aggregate( _
        New StringBuilder(), _
        Function(ByVal s, ByVal i) s.Append(i), _
        Function(ByVal s) s.ToString())

' XPath expression
Dim str2 As String = DirectCast(root.XPathEvaluate("./Paragraph//Text/text()"), IEnumerable) _
    .Cast(Of XText)().Select(Function(ByVal s) s.Value) _
    .Aggregate( _
        New StringBuilder(), _
        Function(ByVal s, ByVal i) s.Append(i), _
        Function(ByVal s) s.ToString())

If str1 = str2 Then
    Console.WriteLine("Results are identical")
Else
    Console.WriteLine("Results differ")
End If
Console.WriteLine(str2)

This example produces the following output:

Results are identical
This is the start of a sentence.  This is a second sentence.

See Also

Concepts

LINQ to XML for XPath Users