Reading multiple child nodes of xml file

You could use an XPath approach like so:

XmlNodeList xnl = doc.SelectNodes(string.Format("/Periods/PeriodGroup[@name='{0}']/Period", PG));

Though prefer LINQ to XML for it's readability.

This will return Period node children based on the PeriodGroup name attribute supplied, e.g. HER:

XDocument xml = XDocument.Load(HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(FileLoc));var nodes = (from n in xml.Descendants("Periods")            where n.Element("PeriodGroup").Attribute("name").Value == "HER"            select n.Element("PeriodGroup").Descendants().Elements()).ToList();

Results:

<PeriodName>Prehistoric</PeriodName><StartDate>-500000</StartDate><EndDate>43</EndDate><PeriodName>Iron Age</PeriodName><StartDate>-800</StartDate><EndDate>43</EndDate><PeriodName>Roman</PeriodName><StartDate>43</StartDate><EndDate>410</EndDate>

The query is pretty straightforward

from n in xml.Descendants("Periods")

Will return a collection of the descendant elements for the element Periods.We then use where to filter this collection of nodes based on attribute value:

where n.Element("PeriodGroup").Attribute("name").Value == "HER"

Will then filter down the collection to PeriodGroup elements that have a name attribute with a value of HER

Finally, we select the PeriodGroup element and get it's descendant nodes

select n.Element("PeriodGroup").Descendants().Elements()

EDIT (See comments)

Since the result of this expression is just a query, we use .ToList() to enumerate the collection and return an object containing the values you need. You could also create anonymous types to store the element values for example:

var nodes = (from n in xml.Descendants("Period").             Where(r => r.Parent.Attribute("name").Value == "HER")             select new             {                  PeriodName = (string)n.Element("PeriodName").Value,                  StartDate = (string)n.Element("StartDate").Value,                  EndDate = (string)n.Element("EndDate").Value             }).ToList();//Crude demonstration of how you can reference each specific element in the result//I would recommend using a stringbuilder here..foreach (var n in nodes){      text += "<br>" + n.PeriodName;      text += "<br>" + n.StartDate;      text += "<br>" + n.EndDate;}

This is what the nodes object will look like after the query has run:

Since the XmlDocument.SelectNodes method actually accepts an XPath expression, you're free to go like this:

XmlNodeList xnl = doc.SelectNodes("/Periods/PeriodGroup[@name='" + PG + "']/Period");foreach (XmlNode node in xnl) {    // Every node here is a <Period> child of the relevant <PeriodGroup>.}

You can learn more on XPath at w3schools.

go thru this

 public static void XMLNodeCheck(XmlNode xmlNode)    {        if (xmlNode.HasChildNodes)        {            foreach (XmlNode node in xmlNode)            {                if (node.HasChildNodes)                {                    Console.WriteLine(node.Name);                    if (node.Attributes.Count!=0)                    {                        foreach (XmlAttribute att in node.Attributes)                        {                            Console.WriteLine("----------" + att.Name + "----------" + att.Value);                        }                    }                    XMLNodeCheck(node);//recursive function                 }                else                {                    if (!node.Equals(XmlNodeType.Element))                    {                        Console.WriteLine(node.InnerText);                    }                }            }        }    }