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POReduce Code Duplication when Searching for values in XML with XPath
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  1. POReduce Code Duplication when Searching for values in XML with XPath
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    copied!<p>I am writing some code to parse an xml file of the following format (truncated for simplicity)</p> <pre><code>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt; &lt;ship name="Foo"&gt; &lt;base_type&gt;Foo&lt;/base_type&gt; &lt;GFX&gt;fooGFX&lt;/GFX&gt; .... &lt;/ship&gt; </code></pre> <p>I am using a dictionary consisting of key pairs of parameter and and xpath to value, and querying this to load all the values into various variables. However, I am noticing that there will be a massive amount of code duplication. In fact, for every value I wish to retrieve, I will have to write another line of almost identical looking code. Here is my code:</p> <pre><code>class Ship { public Ship() { paths = new Dictionary&lt;string, string&gt;(); doc = new XmlDocument(); //Define path to various elements paths.Add("name", "/ship/@name"); paths.Add("base_type", "/ship/base_type"); paths.Add("GFX", "/ship/GFX"); } public void LoadFile(string filename) {// Loads the file and grabs the parameters doc.Load(filename); Name = doc.SelectSingleNode(paths["name"]).Value; Base_type = doc.SelectSingleNode(paths["base_type"]).Value; GFX = doc.SelectSingleNode(paths["GFX"]).Value; } public Dictionary&lt;string, string&gt; paths; //The XPaths to the various elements, define them in constructor public XmlDocument doc; public string Name; public string Base_type; public string GFX; } </code></pre> <p>Notice the duplication here:</p> <pre><code>variable = doc.SelectSingleNode(paths["variable_name"]).value. </code></pre> <p>There are going to be many more variables, so this section will be massive.</p> <p>Is there anyway to simplify this? If this was C++, I would probably try pointers, but I know they are not recommended for use in C#, so is there a similar way?</p> <p>I would be looking for something that I could give a list of variable names and xpaths, and have the code pull out all the values and load them in the variable in some kind of loop or something. I want to use XPaths because I expect that the format of this file may change periodically.</p> <p>Any ideas?</p> <p>Thanks in advance.</p> <p>EDIT: I would also like to be able to modify this data and save it back. I am not adverse to saving an entire new tree if necessary, but it would be nice to modify the data in place if possible. I don't need a solution for the modification, but I just need to have this option open.</p>
 

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