How can I get a reference to the parent object when deserializing XML in C#?

Question

I can't seem to get this working, here is my (stripped down) code: -

[XmlRoot("report")]
public class Report
{
    [XmlArray("sections"), XmlArrayItem("section")]
    public List<Section> Sections;
}

public class Section
{
    public Report Report;
}

Am I missing something?

Answer 1

Your objects contain circular references which is not supported by the XmlSerializer class. You could instead look at the DataContractSerializer which supports such scenarios.

Answer 2

You should make sure you know how you want those classes to serialize and deserialize. Write the XML you want as a result, and figure out how you want objects to become XML and vice versa. It's not a no-brainer.

Answer 3

Here's my solution. It might not be as elegant as you'd expect:

public class Report
{
  //...


  void PostLoad()
  {
    foreach(Section s in Sections)
    {
      s.Report = this;
    }
  }

  public static Report Load(string filename)
  {
    // Load using an XmlSerializer
    Report report = ...;

    report.PostLoad();

    return report;
  }
}