Parse This XML to object

For some reason this was voted down for being to broad by users who don’t know much about xml and objects. This was definitely not a broad question. This is XML and was converted into objects using the qualified answer.

I have the following XML and I am not sure how to parse it into an object. I am not familiar with this type of xml. What is my first step? I would like to parse it into an object.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> 
<DATA_PROVIDERS UID="Providers|REP" FORCE_REFRESH="FALSE" DATA_PROVIDER="" FORMATTED="FALSE" REFRESH="TRUE">
<DATA_PROVIDER NAME="Prov" SOURCE="Provider" DATE="11/18/2014" DURATION="9s" REFRESH="TRUE" CUBE="1">
  <COLUMN INDEX="0" ID="119" TYPE="String" FORMAT="">Prov ID</COLUMN> 
  <COLUMN INDEX="1" ID="118" TYPE="String" FORMAT="">Prov Name</COLUMN> 
  <COLUMN INDEX="2" ID="113" TYPE="String" FORMAT="">Address Info</COLUMN> 
  <COLUMN INDEX="3" ID="110" TYPE="String" FORMAT="">Enroll Status Code</COLUMN> 
  <COLUMN INDEX="4" ID="119" TYPE="String" FORMAT="">Phone</COLUMN> 
  <COLUMN INDEX="5" ID="110" TYPE="String" FORMAT="">Fax</COLUMN> 
  <COLUMN INDEX="6" ID="109" TYPE="String" FORMAT="">Provider Status</COLUMN> 
  <COLUMN INDEX="7" ID="150" TYPE="Date" FORMAT="m/d/yyyy h:mm:ss am/pm">Provider Start Date</COLUMN> 
<ROW>
  <CELL INDEX="0">004042111</CELL> 
  <CELL INDEX="1">CONTOSO West INC</CELL> 
  <CELL INDEX="2">1234 Random Rd. SOMECITY, ZZ 12345 9876</CELL> 
  <CELL INDEX="3">F</CELL> 
  <CELL INDEX="4">5555551234123</CELL> 
  <CELL INDEX="5">5555551234</CELL> 
  <CELL INDEX="6">F - Agency Action</CELL> 
  <CELL INDEX="7">5/31/2011 12:00:00 AM</CELL> 
  </ROW>
<ROW>
  <CELL INDEX="0">004011117</CELL> 
  <CELL INDEX="1">CONTOSO North INC</CELL> 
  <CELL INDEX="2">4321 Random Rd. SOMECITY, ZZ 12345 9876</CELL> 
  <CELL INDEX="3">F</CELL> 
  <CELL INDEX="4">5555551234123</CELL> 
  <CELL INDEX="5">5555551234</CELL> 
  <CELL INDEX="6">F - Agency Action</CELL> 
  <CELL INDEX="7">5/31/2011 12:00:00 AM</CELL> 
  </ROW>
 </DATA_PROVIDER>
</DATA_PROVIDERS>

Answers:

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Method 1

If you’re using Visual Studio 2012 (or greater) and you’re targeting .NET 4.5 (or greater) then Visual Studio can create a class for you that matches the XML:

• Copy the XML to your clipboard
• From within Visual Studio: Edit –> Paste Special –> Paste XML As Classes

Then you’ll need to serialize the data from XML to your newly created class to create a new object:

var myObject = LoadFromXmlString<DATA_PROVIDERS>(xmlData);

public static T LoadFromXmlString<T>(string xml)
{
  T retval = default(T);
  try
  {
    XmlSerializer s = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
    MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(ASCIIEncoding.Default.GetBytes(xml));
    retval = (T)s.Deserialize(ms);
    ms.Close(); 
  }
  catch (Exception ex)
  {
    ex.Data.Add("Xml String", xml);
    throw new Exception("Error loading from XML string.  See data.", ex);
  }
  return retval;

}

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0