Duplicate Object and working with Duplicate without changing Original

Question

Assuming I have an Object ItemVO in which there a bunch of properties already assigned. eg:

ItemVO originalItemVO = new ItemVO();
originalItemVO.ItemId = 1;         


        

Answer 1

As of c# 4.5 the base class object contains a method called MemberwiseClone that enables you to perform a shallow copy of that object and returns the result as a new instance. (If a field is a value type, a bit-by-bit copy of the field is performed. If a field is a reference type, the reference is copied but the referred object is not; therefore, the original object and its clone refer to the same object.)

This is useful if you are looking to implement a prototype design pattern.

If you are looking to implement a deep copy (everything within the class is duplicated as new instances) then serialization or reflection are probably the best tools

Answer 2

To duplicate an object by value instead of reference, you can serialize it (e.g. JSON) and then deserialize it right after. You then have a copy by value.

Here's an example

ItemVO originalItemVO = new ItemVO();
originalItemVO.ItemId = 1;
originalItemVO.ItemCategory = "ORIGINAL";

string json = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.SerializeObject(originalItemVO); 
ItemVO duplicateItemVO = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ItemVO>(json);