Dealing with XElement null value

I have an xml that I am querying. One of the nodes is missing. So when I call XElement.Value I get a null exception.

What is the best way to guard against this? I know I can write an exten开发者_高级运维sion method, but I am wondering is there something build into the language for this?

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use the null coalesce operator ??

Given an XElement elem:

var value = (string)elem ?? "empty";