Linq to XML

Here is a very short post giving an example on how to use Linq to XML. 

Let’s say we have the following XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<projects>
    <project title="Kraankuil">
        <screenshot>kraankuil.jpg</screenshot>
        <uri>http://www.kraankuil.co.za</uri>
        <technologies>Gimp, ASP.NET, CMS</technologies>
        <launched>12 March 2010</launched>
        <description>Website for a small family owned B&amp;B in South Africa.</description>
    </project>
</projects>

We will do a class to easily handle the data like this

public class Project
{
    public string Title { get; set; }
    public string Screenshot { get; set; }
    public string Uri { get; set; }
    public string Technologies { get; set; }
    public string Launched { get; set; }
    public string Description { get; set; }
}

I will be using this is a web service where I use this code

[WebMethod]
[ScriptMethod(ResponseFormat = ResponseFormat.Json)]
public List<Project> ProjectList()
{ 
    XDocument dataDoc;

    // load the file - from cache if possible
    if (HttpContext.Current.Cache["dataDoc"] == null)
    {
        dataDoc = XDocument.Load(Server.MapPath("~/App_Data/Data.xml"));
        HttpContext.Current.Cache["dataDoc"] = dataDoc; // store it in the cache
    } else {
        dataDoc = (XDocument)HttpContext.Current.Cache["dataDoc"];
    }

    //get the projects from the file
    var projectList = from project in dataDoc.Descendants("project")
                      select new Project
                      {
                          Title = project.Attribute("title").Value,
                          Screenshot = project.Element("screenshot").Value,
                          Technologies = project.Element("technologies").Value,
                          Launched = project.Element("launched").Value,
                          Description = project.Element("description").Value,
                          Uri = project.Element("uri").Value
                      };

    return projectList.ToList();
}

Note: This is NOT a best practices guide so do use common sense, it is only meant to get you started

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