Deserialize Object inside object - vb.net

Question

Is this possible?
Public Class Foo
public var as string
public sub Load(byval filename as string)
'This is done
[...]
oItem = [...] 'Code to deserialize
me = oItem 'THIS LINE
end sub
end class
So that you can load foo from the serialized file like so:
Public Sub Main
Dim f as Foo = new Foo()
f.load("myFile")
end sub
Up until now i've had a function that that returns Foo as Object (I'm trying to make the serialize / deserialize process general so I can just copy and paste and avoid explicitly setting each variable)

Answer 1

No, what you want to do in your case is have Load be a Shared Function that returns the newly created item.
More like:
Public Class Foo
public var as string
public Shared Function Load(byval filename as string) As Foo
'This is done
[...]
oItem = [...] 'Code to deserialize
Return oItem
end sub
end class
Public Sub Main
Dim f as Foo
f = Foo.load("myFile")
end sub
Also, rather than embedding the deserialization directly into each class, you can have a general purpose method, such as:
''' <summary>
''' This method is used to deserialize an object from a file that was serialized using the SoapFormatter
''' </summary>
''' <param name="sFileName"></param>
''' <returns></returns>
''' <remarks></remarks>
Public Function Deserialize(Of T)(ByVal sFileName As String) As T
' Exceptions are handled by the caller
Using oStream As Stream = File.Open(sFileName, FileMode.Open, IO.FileAccess.Read)
If oStream IsNot Nothing Then
Return DirectCast((New SoapFormatter).Deserialize(oStream), T)
End If
End Using
Return Nothing
End Function
which you can then call as:
Public Sub Main
Dim f as Foo
f = Deserialize(Of Foo)("myFile")
end sub