Vehicle gas DTD .NET objects and XML parsing with LINQ

• June 10, 2010
• James Skemp
• tutorials / guides

At some point in 2007 I started keeping track of my gas mileage in an XML file, with a custom DTD for validation (and intellisense in oXygen).

I present below the code necessary to create an rough object from the XML, and the LINQ to parse it out.

C# objects

	public class Vehicle {
		public int Id { get; set; }
		public String Make { get; set; }
		public String Model { get; set; }
		public int Year { get; set; }
		public IEnumerable Fillups { get; set; }
	}
public class Fillup {
	public int Id { get; set; }
	public DateTime Date { get; set; }
	public int MilesTotal { get; set; }
	public Decimal MilesDriven { get; set; }
	public Decimal Gallons { get; set; }
	public Decimal CostPerGallon { get; set; }
	public Decimal CostTotal { get; set; }
	public String Notes { get; set; }
}</code></pre>

LINQ to XML
XDocument vehicleGasXml = XDocument.Load(@"C:\path\to\vehicle_gas.xml");
IEnumerable vehicles = from vehicle in vehicleGasXml.Descendants(“vehicle”)
select new Vehicle {
Id = int.Parse(vehicle.Attribute(“id”).Value),
Make = vehicle.Element(“make”).Value,
Model = vehicle.Element(“model”).Value,
Year = int.Parse(vehicle.Element(“year”).Value),
Fillups = from fillup in vehicle.Descendants(“fillup”)
select new Fillup {
Id = int.Parse(fillup.Attribute(“id”).Value),
Date = DateTime.ParseExact(fillup.Element(“date”).Value, “yyyy-MM-dd”, System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture),
MilesTotal = int.Parse(fillup.Element(“milesCar”).Value),
MilesDriven = decimal.Parse(fillup.Element(“milesDriven”).Value),
Gallons = decimal.Parse(fillup.Element(“gallons”).Value),
CostPerGallon = decimal.Parse(fillup.Element(“costGallon”).Value),
CostTotal = decimal.Parse(fillup.Element(“costTotal”).Value),
Notes = fillup.Element(“notes”).Value
}
};

As always, suggestions appreciated. (Although I've already got code that, using .NET 4, creates some rather nice charts with the information contained within a document such as this, and consider this close to complete; name information isn't grabbed, but I'm not sure that's altogether necessary ...)

        
    

        
            
.net
        
            
c#
        
            
linq to xml
        
            
xml
        
            
vehicle gas