Question

I have an xml file that looks something like this

<questions>
  <question>
    <text>What color is an orange?</text>
    <answer>blue</answer>
    <answer>yellow</answer>
    <answer>orange</answer>
  </question>
  <question>
     <text>What color is a banana?</text> ...

I’ve managed to figure out how to read attributes and values into the properties using the public methods for the object, but how would i get a “Question” object that would contain “Answer” objects, would it be better to just serialize than use linq-to-xml

This is using linq:

        var data = from query in questionData.Descendants("question")
                   select new Quiz.Question
                   {
                       QuestionTitle = (string)query.Attribute("title"),
                       QuestionText = query.Element("text") != null ? query.Element("text").Value.Trim() : string.Empty,
                       QuestionImage = query.Element("image") != null ? query.Element("image").Attribute("src").Value : string.Empty

…

in linq how do I go about serializing another node as another object, say i have a list of “answer” object in “question”?

Answer 1

You can use serialization for this, but if you want to have a totally custimizable way of doing this I would recommend this:

In Question class:

public static Question FromXmlElement(XElement el)
{
    return new Question
    {
        Text = el.Element("Text").Value,
        Answers = el.Elements("Answer").Select(a=>a.Value);
    };
}

and when you want to read:

var xdoc = XDocument.Parse(xml);
var questions = xdoc.Element("Questions").Elements("Question")
            .Select(e=> Question.FromXmlElement(e));

from inside the FromXmlElement you can call same method of another complex type if your class has a property of a complex type and so on.