Unexpected NullReferenceException When Parsing XML with XmlDocument in .NET 7
I'm deploying to production and I'm collaborating on a project where I'm facing a `NullReferenceException` while trying to parse an XML document using `XmlDocument` in .NET 7... The XML structure that I'm working with is as follows: ```xml <root> <item> <name>Item 1</name> <value>10</value> </item> <item> <name>Item 2</name> </item> </root> ``` I have the following code to load and process the XML: ```csharp XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument(); try { xmlDoc.Load("data.xml"); // Assuming data.xml contains the XML above XmlNodeList items = xmlDoc.SelectNodes("/root/item"); foreach (XmlNode item in items) { string name = item.SelectSingleNode("name").InnerText; string value = item.SelectSingleNode("value").InnerText; // This line throws the exception Console.WriteLine($"Name: {name}, Value: {value}"); } } catch (Exception ex) { Console.WriteLine(ex.Message); } ``` The issue occurs specifically on the line where I attempt to access `InnerText` of the `value` node. In cases where the `value` node is missing (like for 'Item 2'), I expected it to return `null`, but instead, it throws a `NullReferenceException`. I've tried using a conditional check before accessing `InnerText`, like this: ```csharp if (item.SelectSingleNode("value") != null) { string value = item.SelectSingleNode("value").InnerText; } ``` However, this seems to complicate the code unnecessarily. Is there a more efficient way to handle this scenario while ensuring that I don't run into exceptions? Also, what best practices should I follow to handle optional XML nodes in such cases when parsing XML? Any suggestions or insights would be greatly appreciated. How would you solve this? What would be the recommended way to handle this?