Clone or Duplicate Objects using .Net Reflections library:

.Net, as well as many other object oriented languages, have strong distinctions between value types and reference types. Objects in .Net, which all inherit the same base object class are reference types. Some reference types, such as with collections or datatables, contain methods which easily allow you to “clone”, “duplicate” or copy the values they contain to another object of the same or differing type.

Classes which you create must define their own methods to achieve this same result, as they cannot inherently be easily “cloned” or “duplicated”. There are two types of cloning, “shallow” or “deep”.

Shallow cloning is standard within System.Object (protected method MemberwiseClone). To implement deep cloning, the interface “IClonable” may be used.

However, an alternate solution exists, using the powerful .Net Reflections which in my opinion is much simpler, and also much easier to modify to your needs. Refer to the code snippet below. Enjoy. 😉

private void CopyObject(ref T DestObj, ref T SourceObj)
{
foreach (System.Reflection.PropertyInfo PInfo in typeof(T).GetProperties(Reflection.BindingFlags.IgnoreCase | Reflection.BindingFlags.Public | Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance)) {

typeof(T).GetProperty(PInfo.Name, Reflection.BindingFlags.IgnoreCase | Reflection.BindingFlags.Public | Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance).SetValue(DestObj, typeof(T).GetProperty(PInfo.Name, Reflection.BindingFlags.IgnoreCase | Reflection.BindingFlags.Public | Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance).GetValue(SourceObj, null), null);
}
}

        /// <summary>
        /// Deep cloning method using reflections which attempts to clone SourceObj into DestObj by value and can even be used across classes with the same property names of different types.
        /// </summary>
        /// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam>
        /// <param name="DestObj"></param>
        /// <param name="SourceObj"></param>
        private static void CopyObject<T1, T2>(ref T1 SourceObj, ref T2 DestObj)
        {
            foreach (System.Reflection.PropertyInfo PInfo in typeof(T1).GetProperties(BindingFlags.IgnoreCase | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance))
            {
                PropertyInfo p1 = typeof(T1).GetProperty(PInfo.Name, BindingFlags.IgnoreCase | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance);
                PropertyInfo p2 = typeof(T2).GetProperty(PInfo.Name, BindingFlags.IgnoreCase | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance);
                if ((p2 != null) && (p2.CanWrite))
                {
                    p2.SetValue(DestObj, p1.GetValue(SourceObj, null), null);
                }
            }
        }