Question

Helo!

Is this possible to use string value of one node which tells what type of field is presented in another node using LINQ to XML?

For example:

<node>   <name>nodeName</name>   <type>string</type> </node> <node>   <name>0</name>   <type>bool</type> </node> <node>   <name>42</name>   <type>int</type> </node> 

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Well, you won’t get a nice statically typed API given that the type information is only known at execution time – but you could easily write an extension method on XElement which looks for the appropriate subelements and returns System.Object. For instance (untested):

public static object ParseValue(this XElement element) {     XElement name = element.Element('name');     XElement type = element.Element('type');     // Insert error handling here :)      switch (type.Value)     {         case 'int':             return int.Parse(name.Value);         case 'string':             return name.Value;         case 'bool':             return name.Value == '1'; // Or whatever         default:             throw new ArgumentException('Unknown element type ' + type.Value);     } } 

It’s not how I’d design a data format, but if it’s being thrust upon you…