Ignoring root element when using GetListXml core service

Question

Is there a way to ignore the root element when using GetListXml? Take a look at the below code, I check what objData is and then loop over each result, however I need to ignore the root element ONLY when Settings.TridionPublicationOrStructureGroupId is a publicationId.

    using (var client = new CoreServiceClient("basicHttp"))
    {
        var objData = (IdentifiableObjectData)client.Read(
                 Settings.TridionPublicationOrStructureGroupId, new ReadOptions());
        XElement sgXml = null;

        if (objData is PublicationData)
        {
            sgXml = client.GetListXml(Settings.TridionPublicationOrStructureGroupId, 
                new RepositoryItemsFilterData
                {
                    ItemTypes = new[] { ItemType.StructureGroup },
                    Recursive = true
                });

            //Ignore the root element??
        }
        else if(objData is StructureGroupData)
        {
            sgXml = client.GetListXml(Settings.TridionPublicationOrStructureGroupId,
                        new OrganizationalItemItemsFilterData
                        {
                            ItemTypes = new[] { ItemType.StructureGroup },
                            Recursive = true
                        });
        }

        if (sgXml != null)
        {
            Log.DebugFormat("Found {0} sg(s)", sgXml.DescendantsAndSelf().Count());

            foreach (var sg in sgXml.DescendantsAndSelf()))
            {
               Console.WriteLine(sg.Attribute("ID").Value);
            }
        }
    }

Is this possible?

Answer 1

How about:

using (var client = new CoreServiceClient("basicHttp"))
{
    var objData = (IdentifiableObjectData)client.Read(
                 Settings.TridionPublicationOrStructureGroupId, new ReadOptions());
    XElement sgXml = null;
    IEnumerable<XElement> elements = null;

    if (objData is PublicationData)
    {
       sgXml = client.GetListXml(Settings.TridionPublicationOrStructureGroupId, 
                new RepositoryItemsFilterData
                {
                    ItemTypes = new[] { ItemType.StructureGroup },
                    Recursive = true
                });

       elements = sgXml.Descendants();
    }
    else if(objData is StructureGroupData)
    {
         sgXml = client.GetListXml(Settings.TridionPublicationOrStructureGroupId,
                 new OrganizationalItemItemsFilterData
                 {
                     ItemTypes = new[] { ItemType.StructureGroup },
                     Recursive = true
                 });

       elements = sgXml.DescendantsAndSelf();
    }

    //defensive check
    if(elements!= null && elements.Any())
    {
      //Process elements
      Log.DebugFormat("Found {0} sg(s)", elements.Count());

      foreach (var element in elements))
      {
         Console.WriteLine(element.Attribute("ID").Value);
      }
    }
}

Answer 2

Rather than using sgXml.DescendantsAndSelf(), just use sgXml.Descendants()

Answer 3

In order for XML to be valid, there has to be a root element. Its up to you to ignore the root element or not. For the GetListXml method in your cases, the root element contains the ID of the items that you are searching within.

<tcm:ListItems ID="tcm:x-xxx-x" Managed="512" xmlns:tcm="http://www.tridion.com/ContentManager/5.0">
    <tcmItem ID="tcm:12-123-4" Title="some title" Type="4" ........ />
    ...
</tcm:ListItems>

Siva was correct that you can use Descendants(), but it sounds like you are doing an inclusive search when the ID passed is a SG, so your code is using the ID attribute of the root element to read as a StructureGroupData, which of course is failing when its a Publication because this ID will then be the ID of the Publication you searched within. You can easily just adjust your code though.

The first thing, you don't have to open up the item to check whether or not its a Publication or StructureGroup, the tcm uri contains everything you need. If that last section of the ID is "-1", its a Publication. If its a "-4", its a StructureGroup. Based off this, you can easily make a bool IsStructureGroup(string id) method.

You also really don't need that root element... if it is a StructureGroup, you already have that ID because its what you passed in. If you are hard set on using it however, you can do something like:

IEnumerable<XElement> items = IsStructureGroup(Settings.TridionPublicationOrStructureGroupId) ? sgXml.DescendantsAndSelf() : sgXml.Descendants();

foreach (var sg in items)
{
    Console.WriteLine(sg.Attribute("ID").Value);
}

You can even use Descendants() on both Publications or StructureGroups, and just ignore any element with an ID attribute that contains a Publication. There are many options and different routes that you can do to achieve what you wish.

Answer 4

I tend to use something like this in my foreach loops:

foreach(XElement node in client.GetListXml("tcm:1045-3733-2", filter).Nodes())
{
    Console.WriteLine("Found item " + node.Attribute("ID").Value);
}

This loops through all child nodes of the result of the GetListXml method.