Question

I have a class:

public class Chid1 : Parent{
    public string var1{get;set;}
    public string var2{get;set;}
}

public class Chid2 : Parent{
    public string var3{get;set;}
    public string var4{get;set;}
}

I am collecting some data from an xml file and I need to setup these classes.

So this is what I can do for now:

string child = "Chid1";//from the xml
Parent instance = (Parent)Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(child ) , ...);

Since Parent does not containg details about the childs, I cant do:

instance.var1 = "Some text from the XML";

Is there any solution here of setting up the childs via strings like:

Activator.SetParan(instance,"var1" , "Some text from the XML");

Or something else?

Answer 1

Have you considered using dynamic here. It would make the code much simpler.

dynamic instance = Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(child ) , ...);
instance.var1 = "some text from the XML";

Additionally is there a reason you’re not using a known serialization engine. If you are simply serializing objects to an from an XML stream there are a number of existing solutions that would make your life easier

• .Net XML serialization
• Protobuf for .Net