Question

What I have now is the following code:

Tutorial tutorial =
  (from tutorial in xmlDoc.Descendants("Tutorial")
   select new Tutorial
   {
     Author = tutorial.Element("Author").Value,
     Title = tutorial.Element("Title").Value,
     Date = DateTime.Parse(tutorial.Element("Date").Value),
   }).First();

myTutorial.Author = tutorial.Author;
myTutorial.Title = tutorial.Title;
myTutorial.Date = tutorial.Date;

myTutorial is passed from another method. And the code below has to ‘fill’ it.

The question is: Is there a way to create a LINQ query, which will assign values to the properties of an existing object, rather that creating a new one.

I would like my code to look something like this:

   Tutorial tutorial =
  (from tutorial in xmlDoc.Descendants("Tutorial")
   select myTutorial
   {
     Author = tutorial.Element("Author").Value,
     Title = tutorial.Element("Title").Value,
     Date = DateTime.Parse(tutorial.Element("Date").Value),
   });

The problem I have is:
I have an object which initially only has half of it’s properties set, later I need to fill the rest of the properties. This needs to be done asynchronously.

My Approach:
I use WebClient‘s asynchronous method DownloadStringAsync to download XML file. In the event handler I wan’t to fill an object with the properties it misses. And that’s why I would like to directly pass values to my object rather than creating a new one.

Please let me know if it is not the best approach.

Answer 1

OK, this is pure evil:

var dropThis =
  (from tutorial in xmlDoc.Descendants("Tutorial")
   select new
   {
     Author = (myTutorial.Author = (string)tutorial.Element("Author")),
     Title = (myTutorial.Title = (string)tutorial.Element("Title")),
     Date = (myTutorial.Date = (DateTime)tutorial.Element("Date")),
   }).First();