Binding arbitrary XML to a datagrid

Question

I'm completely new at silverlight, and trying to do things "the right way".

Problem is: I have an XML that I need to get from a web server, and I need to display that data in a datagrid.

I've searched around and I've managed to get the following:

say my XML looks like:

<customers>
    <customer>
        <name>A Person</name>
        <address>my address</address>
    </customer>
    <customer>
        <name>A Guy</name>
        <address>my address 2</address>
    </customer>
</customers>

I can retrieve this and populate a POCO such as:

public class Customer
{
    public string Name { get; set; }

    public string Address { get; set; }
}
...
XDocument oDoc = //read from a string asnychronously
var myData = from info in oDoc.Descendants("customer")
    select new Customer
    {
        Name = Convert.ToString(info.Element("name").Value),
        Address = Convert.ToString(info.Element("address").Value
    };
_grid.ItemsSource = myData;

However, if I take this approach, I won't really be using Silverlight's dynamic binding capabilities.

How can I do this in the "Silverlight" way so that when I (or someone else who actually knows silverlight) look at the code a few years down the line, don't hate absolutely hate what I've done.

I'm not sure what you imagine "dynamic binding" is but Silverlight relies heavily on reflecting over types for its binding. Hence you need a type such as your Customer object in order for Silverlight to bind effectively. — AnthonyWJones

Murven Murven · Accepted Answer · 2010-10-22T18:40:12

Take a look at using the XMLSerializer.Deserialize method to de-serialize your XML automatically without having to deal with XDocument. Your class will look like this:

[XmlRoot]
public class Customer
{
    [XmlElement]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    [XmlElement]
    public string Address { get; set; }

}

Once you have the data de-serialized, take a look at MVVM on how to properly bind the data to your views.

Binding arbitrary XML to a datagrid

1 Answers