Faster deep cloning

Question

Does anyone want a framework/class which allows me to clone by values .Net objects? I\'m only interested with public read/write properties (namely DataContracts), and I don\

Answer 1

Try AutoMapper or BLToolkit Mapping

Answer 2

Dynamic Method based serialization will be fastest. (Generate a dynamic method using light weight codegen and use it for serialization)

You can do 1 method per property/field or one method for the whole object. From my benchmarking doing 1 per property does not give you too much of a performance hit.

See the following code, to see how I do this in Media Browser: http://code.google.com/p/videobrowser/source/browse/trunk/MediaBrowser/Library/Persistance/Serializer.cs

There are also some unit tests there.

There is fast reflection sample on theinstructionlimit that does exactly what you want.

see:

http://theinstructionlimit.com/?p=76

Answer 3

The CGbR Code Generator can generate an implementation of ICloneable for you. All you need is the nuget package and a partial class definition that implements ICloneable. The generator will do the rest for you:

public partial class Root : ICloneable
{
    public Root(int number)
    {
        _number = number;
    }
    private int _number;

    public Partial[] Partials { get; set; }

    public IList<ulong> Numbers { get; set; }

    public object Clone()
    {
        return Clone(true);
    }

    private Root()
    {
    }
} 

public partial class Root
{
    public Root Clone(bool deep)
    {
        var copy = new Root();
        // All value types can be simply copied
        copy._number = _number; 
        if (deep)
        {
            // In a deep clone the references are cloned 
            var tempPartials = new Partial[Partials.Length];
            for (var i = 0; i < Partials.Length; i++)
            {
                var value = Partials[i];
                value = value.Clone(true);
                tempPartials[i] = value;
            }
            copy.Partials = tempPartials;
            var tempNumbers = new List<ulong>(Numbers.Count);
            for (var i = 0; i < Numbers.Count; i++)
            {
                var value = Numbers[i];
                tempNumbers[i] = value;
            }
            copy.Numbers = tempNumbers;
        }
        else
        {
            // In a shallow clone only references are copied
            copy.Partials = Partials; 
            copy.Numbers = Numbers; 
        }
        return copy;
    }
}