Comparing object properties in c# [closed]

Answer 1

The first thing I would suggest would be to split up the actual comparison so that it's a bit more readable (I've also taken out the ToString() - is that needed?):

else {
    object originalProperty = sourceType.GetProperty(pi.Name).GetValue(this, null);
    object comparisonProperty = destinationType.GetProperty(pi.Name).GetValue(comparisonObject, null);

    if (originalProperty != comparisonProperty)
        return false;

The next suggestion would be to minimise the use of reflection as much as possible - it's really slow. I mean, really slow. If you are going to do this, I would suggest caching the property references. I'm not intimately familiar with the Reflection API, so if this is a bit off, just adjust to make it compile:

// elsewhere
Dictionary lookupDictionary = new Dictionary;

Property[] objectProperties = null;
if (lookupDictionary.ContainsKey(sourceType)) {
  objectProperties = lookupProperties[sourceType];
} else {
  // build array of Property references
  PropertyInfo[] sourcePropertyInfos = sourceType.GetProperties();
  Property[] sourceProperties = new Property[sourcePropertyInfos.length];
  for (int i=0; i < sourcePropertyInfos.length; i++) {
    sourceProperties[i] = sourceType.GetProperty(pi.Name);
  }
  // add to cache
  objectProperties = sourceProperties;
  lookupDictionary[object] = sourceProperties;
}

// loop through and compare against the instances

However, I have to say that I agree with the other posters. This smells lazy and inefficient. You should be implementing IComparable instead :-).