How get the variable configuration for custom variable with an action?

Within my custom extension I often have the need to refer to the properties set via the editor for my ArtifactoryVersionVariable within actions, predicates, etc. Is there a better way to get this or is parsing the xml as I'm doing below as good as it gets?

internal static ArtifactoryVersionVariable GetVariableDeclaration(int applicationId, string artifactoryVariableName)
{
    // Get variable properties
    var settings = StoredProcs
             .Variables_GetVariableDeclarations("B", applicationId, null)
             .Execute()
             .Where(s => s.Variable_Name == artifactoryVariableName)
             .FirstOrDefault()
             .Variable_Configuration;

    XmlDocument xml = new XmlDocument();
    xml.LoadXml(settings);

    return new ArtifactoryVersionVariable
    {
        RepositoryKey = xml.SelectSingleNode("//Properties/@RepositoryKey").Value,
        RepositoryPath = xml.SelectSingleNode("//Properties/@RepositoryPath").Value,
        Filter = xml.SelectSingleNode("//Properties/@Filter").Value,
        TrimFromPath = xml.SelectSingleNode("//Properties/@TrimFromPath").Value,
        ReplaceSlashWithDot = bool.Parse(xml.SelectSingleNode("//Properties/@ReplaceSlashWithDot").Value),
        DefaultToNotIncluded = bool.Parse(xml.SelectSingleNode("//Properties/@DefaultToNotIncluded").Value)
    };
}

Product: BuildMaster
Version: 4.6.4

Anything with the suffix _Configuration can be deserialized, so for your example all you need is:

return (ArtifactoryVersionVariable)Util.Persistence
           .DeserializeFromPersistedObjectXml(settings);