Hi there,

I'm writing a custom collection, which will be referened within a
class. Each item within the collection needs to have a link to the
parent container class, e.g.

Item x;
Container c = x.ParentContainer;

I basically got the idea from ControlCollection class, where each
control has a reference to its parent control.
So far, I've implemented it as follows.

class Container
{
   public ItemCollection Items { get; }
}

class ItemCollection
{
   public ItemCollection(Container container) { .. }
   public void Add(Item item) { _innerCollection.Add(item);
item.SetContainer(_container); }
}

class Item
{
   // gets the reference to the parent container
   public Container ParentContainer { get; }
}

I need to be able to serialize the Container class and all its members
into XML, and then deserialize it. Upon deserialization, I'm able to
get the values back into the collection. However, the links to the
parent container are not preserved.
I've read that .NET XML serializer doesn't work with circular
references. Perhaps this could be the reason.

Is there a better implementation?
If not, is there a way to relink the parent elements manually upon
deserialization?

Thanks,
-Oleg.