XmlNode Value vs InnerText

If, for example, your XML looks like <Foo>Bar</Foo> then "Bar" is actually considered a separate node: an XmlText node (sub-classed from XmlNode). The Value property of that XmlText node would be "Bar".

"Foo" is considered to be an XmlElement (also sub-classed from XmlNode). XmlNode.Value returns different things based on the type of node it is. See this table which shows that Value always returns null for Element nodes.

The InnerText of the Foo node returns "Bar" because it concatenates the values of its children (in this case, only the one XmlText node).

I had a similar situation. What I did is, I picked the first child of the current node and checked if it is XMLtext, then displayed its value.

XmlNodeList xNList = xDOC.SelectNodes("//" + XMLElementname);

foreach (XmlNode xNode in xNList)
{
    if (xNode.ChildNodes.Count == 1 && 
        xNode.FirstChild.GetType().ToString() == "System.Xml.XmlText")
    {
        XMLElements.Add(xNode.FirstChild.Value);
    }
    else
    {
        XMLElements.Add("This is not a Leaf node");
    }
}

The XML specification is very picky about terminology and what constitutes what type of XML object. As mentioned, element doesn't have a value. This is specific to attribute (and probably a couple of other node types) because attribute has a syntax that element does not, i.e. name='value'.

If you think that's confusing, check out the difference between child and descendant, or the Root Node and the Document Element!