Question

I have a class with childrens. All childs must have a reference to my root object. Everything is going fine until I deserialize my object. When deserialization occurs, Deserialization do a New() on my child objects so even if before a SetParent has been called, that child object has been replace by a new one and no SetParent has been called. So after Deserialization, none of my child objects know his parent. The object Root is use by a lot of applications and i don’t want all those applications to call the SetParent.

I’ve look for a event AfterDeserialization but haven’t found any. I’ve look through reflection and haven’t found a way to find the parent object. I’ve seen I could Implements ISerializable but find it a bit heavy to manage all the deserialization process (I have about 170 properties in this object).

Can I Implements ISerializable and call a base method that do all the things and after, just call my SetParent function? Or is there a way with reflection to find the parent of an instance of an object that I haven’t found in my research? Or anyone would have any other suggestions?

Public Class Root
    Private _a As Child1
    Private _b As Child2

    Public Property a() As Child1
        Get
            Return _a
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As Child1)
            _a = value
        End Set
    End Property
    Public Property b() As Child2
        Get
            Return _b
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As Child2)
            _b = value
        End Set
    End Property

    Public Sub New()
        a = New Child1
        b = New Child2
        SetParent()
    End Sub

    Friend Sub SetParent()
        a.SetParent(Me)
        b.SetParent(Me)
    End Sub
End Class

Public Class Child1
    Private _parent As Root

    Friend Sub SetParent(ByRef parent As Root)
        _parent = parent
    End Sub
End Class

Public Class Child2
    Private _parent As Root
    Private _a As New Child3

    Public Property a() As Child3
        Get
            Return _a
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As Child3)
            _a = value
        End Set
    End Property

    Friend Sub SetParent(ByRef parent As Root)
        a = New Child3
        _parent = parent
        a.SetParent(parent)
    End Sub
End Class

Public Class Child3
    Private _parent As Root

    Friend Sub SetParent(ByRef parent As Root)
        _parent = parent
    End Sub
End Class

Thanks for your help! :o)

Answer 1

Is it possible to set the parent in the parent property setter?

If you parent is serialize too, the deserialization will call the setter.

ex:

   Public Class Root
       ...
       Public Property a() As Child1  
        Get       
            Return _a     
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As Child1)      
           _a = value    
           _a.SetParent(Me)
        End Set   
      End Property 
      ...
   End Class