Copying the contents of a base class from a derived class

Question

I currently have a derived class and a base class. How can I make the base class of the derived class equal to a base class that I have? Will a shallow copy work?

Answer 1

Create a copy constructor for the base class, in doing so you'll also need to create a parameterless one as well as by adding the copy constructor the default constructor will no longer be generated by the compiler. Then in the derived class call the base class's copy constructor.

public class Base
{
    public int Name { get; set; }
    public string Address { get; set; }

    public Base()
    { }

    public Base(Base toCopy)
    {
        this.Name = toCopy.Name;
        this.Address = toCopy.Address;
    }
}

public class Derived : Base
{
    public String Field { get; set; }

    public Derived(Base toCopy)
        : base (toCopy)
    { }

    // if desired you'll need a parameterless constructor here too
    // so you can instantiate Derived w/o needing an instance of Base
    public Derived()
    { }
}