Avoiding Boxing/Unboxing on unknown input

Question

I am creating an application that parses an XML and retrieves some data. Each xml node specifies the data (const), a recordset's column-name to get the data from (var), a subset of possible data values depending on some condition (enum) and others. It may also specify, alongside the data, the format in which the data must be shown to the user.

The thing is that for each node type I need to process the values differently and perform some actinons so, for each node, I need to store the return value in a temp variable in order to later format it... I know I could format it right there and return it but that would mean to repeat myself and I hate doing so.

So, the question: How can I store the value to return, in a temp variable, while avoiding boxing/unboxing when the type is unknown and I can't use generics?

P.S.: I'm designing the parser, the XML Schema and the view that will fill the recordset so changes to all are plausible.

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Update

I cannot post the code nor the XML values but this is the XML structure and actual tags.

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<root>
    <entity>

        <header>
            <field type="const">C1</field>
            <field type="const">C2</field>

            <field type="count" />
            <field type="sum" precision="2">some_recordset_field</field> 

            <field type="const">C3</field>
            <field type="const">C4</field>
            <field type="const">C5</field>
        </header>

        <detail>
            <field type="enum" fieldName="some_recordset_field">
                <match value="0">M1</match>
                <match value="1">M2</match>
            </field>
            <field type="const">C6</field>

            <field type="const">C7</field>
            <field type="const">C8</field>
            <field type="var" format="0000000000">some_recordset_field</field>
            <field type="var" format="MMddyyyy">some_recordset_field</field>
            <field type="var" format="0000000000" precision="2">some_recordset_field</field>
            <field type="var" format="0000000000">some_recordset_field</field>
            <field type="enum" fieldName ="some_recordset_field">
                <match value="0">M3</match>
                <match value="1">M4</match>
            </field>
            <field type="const">C9</field>
        </detail>

    </entity>
</root>

Answer 1

Have you tried using the var type? That way you don't need to know the type of each node. Also, some small sample of your scenario would be useful.