Best way to create instance of child object from parent object

Question

I\'m creating a child object from a parent object. So the scenario is that I have an object and a child object which adds a distance property for scenarios where I want to s

Answer 1

A generic solution would be to serialize it to json and back. In the json-string is no information about the class name from which it was serialized. Most people do this in javascript.

As you see it works well for pocco objects but i don't guarantee that it works in every complex case. But it does event for not-inherited classes when the properties are matched.

using Newtonsoft.Json;

namespace CastParentToChild
{
    public class Program
    {
        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var p = new parent();
            p.a=111;
            var s = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(p);
            var c1 = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(s);
            var c2 = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(s);

            var foreigner = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(s);

            bool allWorks = p.a == c1.a && p.a == c2.a && p.a == foreigner.a;
            //Your code goes here
            Console.WriteLine("Is convertable: "+allWorks + c2.b);
        }
    }

    public class parent{
        public int a;
    }

    public class child1 : parent{
     public int b=12345;   
    }

    public class child2 : child1{
    }

    public class NoFamily{
        public int a;
        public int b = 99999;
    }

    // Is not Deserializeable because
    // Error 'NoFamily2' does not contain a definition for 'a' and no extension method 'a' accepting a first argument of type 'NoFamily2' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)
    public class NoFamily2{
        public int b;
    }
}