How to deserialize object from XML in .NET

This article shows how to deserialize an object stored in an XML format

Assume we have the following .NET class

public class MyItem 
{
    public string ItemProp {get;set;}
}

public class MyData 
{
    public string MyProp1 {get;set;}
    public int MyProp2 {get;set;}
    public List<MyItem> Items {get;set;}
}

The corresponding XML should be of this form:

<MyData>
	<MyProp1>prop1</MyProp1>
	<MyProp2>2</MyProp2>
	<Items>
		<MyItem>
			<ItemProp>a</ItemProp>
		</MyItem>
		<MyItem>
			<ItemProp>b</ItemProp>
		</MyItem>
	</Items>
</MyData>

We need to decorate the .NET class with the following attributes:

public class MyItem 
{
	[XmlElement("ItemProp")]
	public string ItemProp {get;set;}
}

[XmlRoot("MyData")]
public class MyData 
{
    [XmlElement("MyProp1")]
    public string MyProp1 {get;set;}
    [XmlElement("MyProp2")]
    public int MyProp2 {get;set;}
    [XmlElement("Items")]
    public List<MyItem> Items {get;set;}
}

To deserialize use this:

XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyData));
using (TextReader reader = new StringReader(...))
{
    MyData result = (MyData) serializer.Deserialize(reader);
}