How do you do a deep copy of an object in .NET? [duplicate]

Answer 1

I wrote a deep object copy extension method, based on recursive "MemberwiseClone". It is fast (three times faster than BinaryFormatter), and it works with any object. You don't need a default constructor or serializable attributes.

Source code:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Reflection;
using System.ArrayExtensions;

namespace System
{
    public static class ObjectExtensions
    {
        private static readonly MethodInfo CloneMethod = typeof(Object).GetMethod("MemberwiseClone", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);

        public static bool IsPrimitive(this Type type)
        {
            if (type == typeof(String)) return true;
            return (type.IsValueType & type.IsPrimitive);
        }

        public static Object Copy(this Object originalObject)
        {
            return InternalCopy(originalObject, new Dictionary(new ReferenceEqualityComparer()));
        }
        private static Object InternalCopy(Object originalObject, IDictionary visited)
        {
            if (originalObject == null) return null;
            var typeToReflect = originalObject.GetType();
            if (IsPrimitive(typeToReflect)) return originalObject;
            if (visited.ContainsKey(originalObject)) return visited[originalObject];
            if (typeof(Delegate).IsAssignableFrom(typeToReflect)) return null;
            var cloneObject = CloneMethod.Invoke(originalObject, null);
            if (typeToReflect.IsArray)
            {
                var arrayType = typeToReflect.GetElementType();
                if (IsPrimitive(arrayType) == false)
                {
                    Array clonedArray = (Array)cloneObject;
                    clonedArray.ForEach((array, indices) => array.SetValue(InternalCopy(clonedArray.GetValue(indices), visited), indices));
                }

            }
            visited.Add(originalObject, cloneObject);
            CopyFields(originalObject, visited, cloneObject, typeToReflect);
            RecursiveCopyBaseTypePrivateFields(originalObject, visited, cloneObject, typeToReflect);
            return cloneObject;
        }

        private static void RecursiveCopyBaseTypePrivateFields(object originalObject, IDictionary visited, object cloneObject, Type typeToReflect)
        {
            if (typeToReflect.BaseType != null)
            {
                RecursiveCopyBaseTypePrivateFields(originalObject, visited, cloneObject, typeToReflect.BaseType);
                CopyFields(originalObject, visited, cloneObject, typeToReflect.BaseType, BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic, info => info.IsPrivate);
            }
        }

        private static void CopyFields(object originalObject, IDictionary visited, object cloneObject, Type typeToReflect, BindingFlags bindingFlags = BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.FlattenHierarchy, Func filter = null)
        {
            foreach (FieldInfo fieldInfo in typeToReflect.GetFields(bindingFlags))
            {
                if (filter != null && filter(fieldInfo) == false) continue;
                if (IsPrimitive(fieldInfo.FieldType)) continue;
                var originalFieldValue = fieldInfo.GetValue(originalObject);
                var clonedFieldValue = InternalCopy(originalFieldValue, visited);
                fieldInfo.SetValue(cloneObject, clonedFieldValue);
            }
        }
        public static T Copy(this T original)
        {
            return (T)Copy((Object)original);
        }
    }

    public class ReferenceEqualityComparer : EqualityComparer