Deserialize to self

Question

Ok, I\'m probably just having an epic fail here, but my mind wants to say this should work.

Assume DataProtect.DecryptData takes an encrypted string as input and a d

Answer 1

What you want is a static factory method that creates the object you require.

class ArrivedDetails
{
///...

    public static ArrivedDetails CreateFromEncryptedKey(string encrypted)
    {
        return DataProtect.deserializeXML(DataProtect.DecryptData(encrypted));
    }
///...

The reason your initial approach didn't work is because this is a private read-only instance field that returns the object from which it is called. You can't write to this.