Ignore NullReferenceException when reading object properties

Question

Is there any way to direct C# to ignore NullReferenceException (or any specific exception for that matter) for a set of statements. This is useful when trying to read properties from a deserialized object that may contain many null objects in it. Having a helper method to check for null could be one way but I'm looking for something close to 'On Error Resume Next' (from VB) at a block of statement level.

EDIT:Try-Catch will skip the succeeding statements on exception

try
{
   stmt 1;// NullReferenceException here, will jump to catch - skipping stmt2 and stmt 3
   stmt 2;
   stmt 3;
}
catch (NullReferenceException) { }

For Example: I'm deserializing an XML message to an object and then try to access a property like

Message.instance[0].prop1.prop2.ID

now prop2 could be a null object (because it doesn't exists in XML Message - an optional element in XSD). right now I need to check for null for each element in the hierarchy before accessing the leaf element. i.e I've to check if instance[0], prop1, prop2 are not null, before accessing 'ID'.

Is there a better way that avoids null-checking for each element in the hierarchy?

Answer 1

In short: no. Null-check the reference before trying to use it. One useful trick here might be C# 3.0 extension methods... they allow you to appear to invoke something on a null reference without error:

string foo = null;
foo.Spooky();
...
public static void Spooky(this string bar) {
    Console.WriteLine("boo!");
}

Other than that - perhaps some use of the conditional operator?

string name = obj == null ? "" : obj.Name;