My application receives a constant stream of xml files which are more or less a direct copy of the database record <record type="update"> <field name="id">987654321</field> <field name="user_id">4321</field> <field name="updated">2011-11-24 13:43:23</field> </record> And I need to deserialize this into a class which provides nullable property's for all columns class Record { public long? Id { get; set; } public long? UserId { get; set; } public DateTime? Updated { get; set; } } I just cant seem to work out a method of doing this without having to parse the xml file manually and switch on the field's name attribute to store the values. Is their a way this can be achieved quickly using an XmlSerializer? And if not is their a more efficient way of parsing it manually? Regards and thanks My main problem is that the attribute name needs to have its value set to a property name and its value as the contents of a <field>..</field> element