Question

I’m creating a program where I save information in a XML, in that XML I put the value and its type (DataType is an XML).

Is there a way to get that value in a object variable with its datatype? I’m having problems where the value is a string or decimal, integers, etc.

EXAMPLE:

<Answer ProblemID="0" ObjectiveID="1" IsCorrect="False">
  <Result DataType="System.Nullable`1[System.Decimal]" Value="45" />
</Answer>
<Answer ProblemID="0" ObjectiveID="1" IsCorrect="False">
  <Result DataType="System.Nullable`1[System.Decimal]" Value="Null" />
</Answer>
<Answer ProblemID="0" ObjectiveID="5" IsCorrect="False">
  <Result DataType="System.Nullable`1[Factory.Factories.Comparison2.Comparators]" Value="Null" />
</Answer>

Answer 1

sounds like what you want is xml serialization, something like this:

// serialize an object to XML string
public string ToXml<_type>(_type itm)
{
    XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(itm.GetType());
    StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
    ser.Serialize(sw, itm);
    return sw.ToString();
}

public _type FromXml<_type>(string str)
{
    XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(itm.GetType());
    return (_type)ser.Deserialize(new StringReader(xml));
}

edit

you can control how the object is serialized by using attributes on the items you want to serialize (or not):

public class Movie
{
   // Serialize the price field as an attribute with the given namspace
   [XmlAttribute( Namespace ="www.diranieh.com")]
   public decimal price;

   //serialize as <MovieName>
   [XmlElement("MovieName")]
   public string Title;

   // dont serialize this
   [XmlIgnore]
   public int Rating;

}

more information here on msdn