.Net Deep cloning - what is the best way to do that?

Question

I need to perform deep cloning on my complex object model. What do you think is the best way to do that in .Net?
I thought about serializing / Deserializing
no need

Answer 1

If you control the object model, then you can write code to do it, but it is a lot of maintenance. There are lots of problems, though, which mean that unless you need absolutely the fastest performance, then serialization is often the most manageable answer.

This is one of the cases where BinaryFormatter works acceptably; normally I'm not a fan (due to the issues with versioning etc) - but since the serialized data is for immediate consumption this isn't an issue.

If you want it a bit faster (but without your own code), then protobuf-net may help, but requires code changes (to add the necessary metadata etc). And it is tree-based (not graph-based).

Other serializers (XmlSerializer, DataContractSerializer) are also fine, but if it is just for clone, they may not offer much over BinaryFormatter (except perhaps that XmlSerializer doesn't need [Serializable].

So really, it depends on your exact classes and the scenario.