XmlNode Value vs InnerText

Question

I'm creating a ping application for school with an XML full of URLs. I lost an hour because of XmlNode.Value was resulting in a null.

Then I changed it into InnerText and it worked fine.

Now I was wonder what's the difference because MSDN says that .Value returns the value of the node and InnerText returns the concatenated values of the node and all its child nodes.

Can someone explain this for me please?

<sites>
<site>
    <url>www.test.be</url>
    <email>test@test.be</email>
</site>
<site>
    <url>www.temp.be</url>
    <email>temp@temp.be</email>
</site>
<site>
    <url>www.lorim.ipsum</url>
    <email>interim.address@domain.com</email>
</site></sites>

@FrazellThomas - the differences between .Value and .InnerText can be easily understood without seeing his XML — Robert Levy, Oct 24 '11 at 15:12
If you debug and use the immediate window you may be able to save yourself a lot of time in debugging things. It allows you to execute code based on the current context and will write out all of the properties and their values of the XElement. This approach would allow you to easily glance at the object graph and verify that Value is null, but InnerText contains your value. Hope this helps. — The Muffin Man, Jan 04 '17 at 18:05

score 96 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 16 '14 at 05:07

96

If, for example, your XML looks like <Foo>Bar</Foo> then "Bar" is actually considered a separate node: an XmlText node (sub-classed from XmlNode). The Value property of that XmlText node would be "Bar".

"Foo" is considered to be an XmlElement (also sub-classed from XmlNode). XmlNode.Value returns different things based on the type of node it is. See this table which shows that Value always returns null for Element nodes.

The InnerText of the Foo node returns "Bar" because it concatenates the values of its children (in this case, only the one XmlText node).

edited Mar 16 '14 at 05:07

Racil Hilan

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answered Oct 24 '11 at 15:04

Robert Levy

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Note: the xpath for selecting the TextNode would be "Foo/text()" – Matthijs Wessels Jan 03 '13 at 11:10
Hi Robert! How can I use serialization with this? If I take your example Bar, I will have a class called "Foo" but which property should I have to get "Bar" serialized inside it? – PlaTyPuS Feb 19 '18 at 17:20

score 7 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 17 '16 at 08:25

I had a similar situation. What I did is, I picked the first child of the current node and checked if it is XMLtext, then displayed its value.

XmlNodeList xNList = xDOC.SelectNodes("//" + XMLElementname);

foreach (XmlNode xNode in xNList)
{
    if (xNode.ChildNodes.Count == 1 && 
        xNode.FirstChild.GetType().ToString() == "System.Xml.XmlText")
    {
        XMLElements.Add(xNode.FirstChild.Value);
    }
    else
    {
        XMLElements.Add("This is not a Leaf node");
    }
}

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 24 '11 at 18:22

1

The XML specification is very picky about terminology and what constitutes what type of XML object. As mentioned, element doesn't have a value. This is specific to attribute (and probably a couple of other node types) because attribute has a syntax that element does not, i.e. name='value'.

If you think that's confusing, check out the difference between child and descendant, or the Root Node and the Document Element!

answered Oct 24 '11 at 18:22

Tom W

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Just more reasons to abandon XML for JSON. – CodeMonkey Jul 15 '16 at 12:22

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 16 '18 at 05:51

As url element is the leaf node, the InnerText(also InnerXml) property contains the element value. For element nodes, the value property will be null as shown in msdn documentation https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xmlnode.value(v=VS.110).aspx.

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 24 '11 at 15:05

0

Regarding to MSDN, Value property of XmlNodeType.Element returns:

null. You can use the XmlElement.InnerText or XmlElement.InnerXml properties to access the value of the element node.

answered Oct 24 '11 at 15:05

abatishchev

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Is it possible for .InnerXml to return null? From my brief testing, it doesn't appear so, e.g., when I create a node, explicitly assign `node.InnerXml = null;` and then test for `node.InnerXml == null;` it's false. Instead, `node.InnerXml == string.Empty;` is true. Is this behavior I can rely on? MSDN docs are silent on this. – Jason Suárez Mar 29 '12 at 21:05

XmlNode Value vs InnerText

5 Answers5

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