How to select single XML node value fastest

Question

I have the following xml

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<test>
    <exam paper="math" section="third" value="dull">
        <place>college</place> 
    </exam> 
</test>

and i want to get the value of "section" and place "tag" with best performance. Shall i use linq or xmldatareader? please share the code also

Answer 1

XmlDataReader would probably be faster than LINQ to XML, but LINQ to XML will probably be easier to write and maintain.

I was able to run the following code ten thousand (10,000) times in just over 0.1 seconds: do you need better performance than that?

var doc = XDocument.Parse(
@"<?xml version=""1.0""?>
<test>
    <exam paper=""math"" section=""third"" value=""dull"">
        <place>college</place>
    </exam>
</test>");
var info = 
    (from test in doc.Elements("test")
    from exam in test.Elements("exam")
    select new{
        section = exam.Attribute("section").Value,
        place = exam.Element("place").Value
    })
    .ToList();