Is there a way to convert a dynamic or anonymous object to a strongly typed, declared object?

Question

If I have a dynamic object, or anonymous object for that matter, whose structure exactly matches that of a strongly typed object, is there a .NET method to build a typed obj

Answer 1

Your question comes down to the question: can I convert one statically typed variable into another statically typed variable (from different inheritance chains)? and the answer, obviously, is No.

Why does your question come down to the above question?

• Dynamic type usage compiles into using the Object type with reflection.
• Your code receives Object in reality, that (in reality) contains value from one particular static type.

So, in fact, your code is dealing with the statically typed value, assigned to the Object, and treated as Dynamic at compile time. Therefore, the only case when you can convert one statically typed value into another [without reflection] is when they are part of the same inheritance chain. Otherwise, you are bound to using reflection explicitly (written by you) or implicitly (written by MS with Dynamic usage).

In other words, the following code will work at runtime only if the value assigned to the dynamic is derived from Person or is Person itself (otherwise the cast to Person will throw an error):

dynamic dPerson = GetDynamicPerson();
Person thePerson = (Person)dPerson;

That's pretty much it.

Fair to mention, you can copy the values byte by byte with unsafe code accessing the memory addresses (like in C++), but that to me is nothing better than reflection.