Create pointer to parent object in deserialization process in C#

Question

I have a classes like:

[Serializable]
public class child {
     public Parent parent;
}

[Serializable]
public class Parent {
  public List<child> children;
}

When I deserialize Parent, I want each of each children to have a reference to it's parent. Question is, where in the deserialization process can I set the child's "parent" pointer? I can't seem to use a custom constructor for child, because deserialization always uses the default constructor. If I implement ISerializable, then it seems that the child objects have already been created by the time the parent is created. Is there another way to achieve this?

Answer 1

If you leave it alone and let Parent be a public read/write property of the Child class, .NET automatic serialization process will handle it properly.

Answer 2

I accomplished this (sort of) by overriding the Add method in the child object's collection class, to 'set" a property value in the child class with the unique identifer of the parent object

 public class Connections: List<Connection>
    {       public new void Add(Connection connection)
        {
            connection.ApplicationName = ApplicationName;
            base.Add(connection);
        }
    }