Complex XML Parsing in C#

Question

Is there a good way like Linq to XML or Xpath to loop over the elements in Batch and create Dog instances without needing to parse Dog manually?

It depends on what you mean by "manually". I've found it's useful to have a pattern where each relevant class has a static FromXElement factory method (or a constructor taking an XElement) which extracts the relevant details. With LINQ to XML that's pretty straightforward, e.g.

public static Dog FromXElement(XElement element)
{
    // Or whatever...
    return new Dog((string) element.Element("Name"),
                   (double) element.Element("Weight"));
}

Then you can use:

List<Dog> dogs = batch.Elements("Dog")
                      .Select(x => Dog.FromXElement(x))
                      .ToList();

(You may be able to use Select(Dog.FromXElement) instead - it depends on which version of C# you're using.)

To process all the animals in a batch, you'd probably want something like:

private static readonly Dictionary<string, Func<XElement, Animal>> Factories =
    new Dictionary<string, Func<XElement, Animal>>
{
    { "Dog", Dog.FromXElement },
    { "Cat", Cat.FromXElement },
    // etc
}
...
List<Animal> animals = batch.Elements()
                            .Select(x => Factories[x.Name.LocalName](x))
                            .ToList();