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POHow can I deep copy an object of one object type to another object type that share an inheritance structure
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copied!<p>I am currently building an object model for HL7 messages. Without diving into those, the basic structure that we have looks similar to this:</p> <ul> <li>Base Object <ul> <li>Intermediary Object <ul> <li>DeepMessage1</li> <li>DeepMessage2</li> </ul></li> <li>Message1</li> <li>Message2</li> </ul></li> </ul> <p>I want to have a deep copy/clone that will copy all of the similar properties from DeepMessage1 to DeepMessage2 or Message1 or Message2.</p> <pre><code>public class BaseObject { PersonName Name; //A personName includes a first name and last name. } public class IntermediaryObject : BaseObject { Accident accident; //An accident codes and a description. } public class Message1 : BaseObject { //this class doesn't actually contain any special handling, just used for //easy understanding for the API } public class Message2 : BaseObject { DateTime AdmissionDate; //Note the admission date is also contained in //DeepMessage1, but not DeepMessage2 } public class DeepMessage1 : IntermediaryObject { DateTime AdmissionDate; //Note this property is also contained in Message2 and //needs to be copied } public class DeepMessage2 : IntermediaryObject { DateTime DischargeDate; } </code></pre> <p>With that structure in mind, I want to be able to create a deep copy of every property that one object shares with another. <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/78536/cloning-objects-in-c-sharp">This other question</a> was a really good start, but ultimately I couldn't use reflection as that was shallow cloning, and serialization requires the exact same object.</p> <p>I ended up with this code, but it only performs a shallow copy.</p> <pre><code>public T Copy<T>() where T : new() { T destination = new T(); if (destination is HL7Message) { foreach (var destinationProperty in destination.GetType().GetProperties()) { foreach (var sourceProperty in this.GetType().GetProperties()) { if (destinationProperty.Name.Equals(sourceProperty.Name)) { destinationProperty.SetValue(destination, destinationProperty.GetValue(this, null), null); } } } return destination; } else { throw new InvalidOperationException("The destination copy type is not an HL7Message object"); } } </code></pre> <p>I was hoping that in my <code>if (destinationProperty.Name.Equals(sourceProperty.Name))</code> block I could attempt to call Copy on any properties that are of a specific base type (which all of the objects in my library extend). However, I couldn't get the Copy in that section to work as I can't determine the T at runtime.</p> <p>Do I just need to have a separate type of Copy for the specific objects and have the Messages use the Copy or is there a way to do this that is so damn crazy?</p>

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