Get item value

var status = xDoc
    .Descendants("optinStatus")    // get the optinStatus element
    .Single()                      // we're expecting a single result
    .Value;                        // get the XElement value

      

        
        
        
      

    

Example

Here's a working script for you. You can see that live is running here . Output signal 3

.

using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Linq;

public class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        var xDoc = XDocument.Parse(xmlString);
        var status = xDoc.Descendants("optinStatus").Single();
        Console.WriteLine(status.Value);
    }

    private static string xmlString = @"

<response op=""getcustomerinfo"" status=""200"" message=""ok"" version=""1.0"">
  <customer>
    <totalMsg>3</totalMsg>
    <custId>9008281</custId>
    <custName></custName>
    <timestamp>2015-04-30 16:17:19</timestamp>
    <optinStatus>3</optinStatus>
    <custMobile>6185312349</custMobile>
    <subacct>1st Choice Courier</subacct>
  </customer>
</response> 

    ";
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

Explanation

Descendents()

is a method of instance axes (or just axes in shorthand). It returns IEnumerable<XElement>

all matching children. Based on its results, we call Single()

. This is a Linq method that returns a single element in a sequence. If there is more than one item, it will throw an error. We are left with one XElement

. This represents a whole XML element. Since we want its value not to be the entire element, we name the property Value

. Bingo, we're done.

Bit More

Axles are of two types:

• The instance axis methods that are listed here on MSDN are invokable members of the classes XElement
  
  , XDocument
  
  and XNode
  
  .
• The extended axis methods that are listed on the MSDN list here are invokable in collections.

With one exception, the axes method returns a collection of the type IEnumerable<T>

. An exception is Element()

that which returns the first matching child object. This is what AmatuerDev used, and as in your question, if you only expect one result, this is a good, if not the best approach that Descendants()

.

Get attribute value

Once we have XElement

, we can extract one of its attributes instead of its value. We do this by calling the method Attributes()

. It returns a match XAttribute

. Since we only want the value of the attribute, we name the property Value

. Voila.

// for attribute
var response = xDoc.Descendants("response").Single();
var attr = response.Attribute("status");

      

        
        
        
      

    

General approach

Using Linq to XML is a two step process.

• Calling the axis method to get the result IEnumerable<T>
  
  .
• Use Linq to query this.

see also

Below is the relevant MSDN documentation:

• How to get the value of an element (LINQ to XML)
• LINQ to XML pillars