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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-10T15:49:38+00:00

I want to try and return an object from an XML reader that I

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I want to try and return an object from an XML reader that I wrote to process a file that will have a partially unknown structure.

Here is a sample of the XML.

<xml>
  <strings>
    <Home>
      <Index>
        <PreWrapper>
          <Left>
            <Title>Blah</Title>
            <Body>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consec tetuer adipiscing elit. Praesent vestibulum molestie lacus. Aenean nonummy hendrerit mauris. Phasellus porta. Fusce suscipit</Body>
            <LinkText>read more</LinkText>
            <LinkUrl>#</LinkUrl>
          </Left>
          <Center>
            <Title>Exploit your ideas</Title>
            <Body>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consec tetuer adipiscing elit. Praesent vestibulum molestie lacus. Aenean nonummy hendrerit mauris. Phasellus porta. Fusce suscipit</Body>
            <LinkText>read more</LinkText>
            <LinkUrl>#</LinkUrl>
          </Center>
          <Right>
            <Title>Grow your business</Title>
            <Body>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consec tetuer adipiscing elit. Praesent vestibulum molestie lacus. Aenean nonummy hendrerit mauris. Phasellus porta. Fusce suscipit</Body>
            <LinkText>read more</LinkText>
            <LinkUrl>#</LinkUrl>
          </Right>
        </PreWrapper>
      </Index>
    </Home>
  </strings>
  <config>
    <Home>
      <Index>
        <ShowPreWrapper>True</ShowPreWrapper>
      </Index>
    </Home>
  </config>
</xml>

I want to be able to just call with my reader

var left = reader.GetObject("xml/strings/Home/Index/PreWrapper/Left");

and I want it to return an anonymous object (or a dynamic object, but I don’t know much about those) that looks like

left.Title
left.Body
left.LinkText
left.LinkUrl

or 

var xml = reader.GetObjcet("xml");

and be able to dive right into it like

xml.strings.Home.Index....

but I just cannot figure out how to create this object.
Is this even possible?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I think that you could approximate this using the ExpandoObject class, but it is quite likely that there are better ways to do it (like using a more loosely typed language, using dictionaries, etc.)

    There is certainly nothing built in to the .NET BCL to do this.

    EDIT: I found this recently, and it probably applies in this situation: ElasticObject.

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