Faster deep cloning

Question

Does anyone want a framework/class which allows me to clone by values .Net objects? I\'m only interested with public read/write properties (namely DataContracts), and I don\

Answer 1

If you are talking about an object tree/graph:

Writing specific IL to serialize an object is tricky. IMO, your best bet is to look at a full serialization, like how DataContractSerializer would work - but not necessarily with that engine.

For example, protobuf-net has a Serializer.DeepClone method that might help. It should be faster than DataContractSerializer, at least. At the current time, you need to add some clues for the serializer (even if just [ProtoContract(ImplicitFields=ImplicitFields.AllPublic)]) - however, the current (incomplete) work-in-progress offers POCO support without attributes.

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If you are talking about individual objects:

There are fairly simple things you can do here with Expression in .NET 3.5; build a dynamic Expression based on reflection, and call .Compile(). MiscUtil has this already:

DestType clone = PropertyCopy.CopyFrom(original);

With .NET 2.0/3.0 (without Expression) you might consider HyperDescriptor for similar purposes.