Reading XML file then sorting by name alphabetically

Question

I am trying to read in data from an XML file, which I can do with the code below.

How would I then sort the data by name alphabetically to be used on an electronic menu app?

Could someone show me how to do this?

The code block below does work, but I have no idea how to sort the data alphabetically by node type.

For instance, I would like to sort by "name" alphabetically.

Other sorting methods could include sorting by price or category, etc.

Here is the XML data structure:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<base>
    <menu>
        <item>
            <category></category>  
            <name></name>
            <price></price>
            <featured></featured>
            <code></code>
            <timestart></timestart>
            <timeend></timeend>
        </item>
    </menu>
</base>

Here is the code:

public void XML_Get_MenuData()
{
    try
    {
        XmlDocument myDoc2 = new XmlDocument();

        myDoc2.Load("\\user\\today1.xml");

        XmlNodeList itemNodes = myDoc2.GetElementsByTagName("item");

        ushort i = 0;

        Menu_Items = 0;

        foreach (XmlNode sINode in itemNodes)
        {
            Category[i] = sINode["category"].InnerText;
            Console.PrintLine("category: {0}", Category[i]);

            ItemName[i] = sINode["name"].InnerText;
            Console.PrintLine("name: {0}", ItemName[i]);

            Price[i] = sINode["price"].InnerText;
            Console.PrintLine("price: {0}", Price[i]);

            Featured[i] = sINode["featured"].InnerText;
            Console.PrintLine("featured: {0}", Featured[i]);

            if (Featured[i] == "yes")
            {
                uFeatured[i] = 1;
            }
            else
            {
                uFeatured[i] = 0;
            }

            Code[i] = sINode["code"].InnerText;
            Console.PrintLine("code: {0}", Code[i]);


            TimeStart[i] = sINode["timestart"].InnerText;
            Console.PrintLine("timestart: {0}", TimeStart[i]);

            TimeEnd[i] = sINode["timeend"].InnerText;
            Console.PrintLine("timeend: {0}", TimeEnd[i]);

            i++;
        }

        Menu_Items = i;
        Console.PrintLine("Menu Items: {0}", Menu_Items);
    }
    catch
    {
        Console.PrintLine("missed Menu Items: {0}");
    }

}

Answer 1

You should look into the lovely LINQ to XML, which allows you to do stuff like this:

var Doc = XDocument.Load("PathToYourXml");

var OrderedItems = Doc.Descendants("item").OrderBy(x => x.Element("name").Value);

OrderedItems contains your objects alphabetically ordered by their name, in the shape of a bunch (bunch = IOrderedEnumerable) of XElements. If you wanted do make the order descending, you'd just use OrderByDescending:

var OrderedItems = Doc.Descendants("item").OrderByDescending(x => x.Element("name").Value);

As a side note, right now you're iterating your items and printing them, and apparently storing the data horizontally in arrays. Mapping them to a class instead would be useful to avoid having to use magical strings like "item" and "name", which is error-prone. I'd encourage you to create a model for your items and investigate a bit on how to parse the XML into a list of your object, using something like an XmlSerializer, and maybe taking a look at questions like this, where you'll find some alternatives.