c# - Copy two identical object with different namespaces (recursive reflection)

Question

I'm working in c# with several workspaces that have one specific class which his always the same in each workspace. I would like to be able have a copy of this class to be able to work with it without dealing with namespaces differences. example :

namespace1 {
    class class1{
        public class2;
    }

    class class2{
        public string;
    }

}

namespace2 {
    class class1{
        public class2;
    }

    class class2{
        public string;
    }
}

In my copied Class I've got a function to copy all data's to one of the namespace's class. It's working if i only have c# standard types. I got exeption ( "Object does not match target type." ) as soon as I'm dealing with class2 object (which is also from different namespaces)

public Object toNamespaceClass(Object namespaceClass)
{
    try
    {
        Type fromType = this.GetType();
        Type toType = namespaceClass.GetType();

        PropertyInfo[] fromProps = fromType.GetProperties();
        PropertyInfo[] toProps = toType.GetProperties();

        for (int i = 0; i < fromProps.Length; i++)
        {
            PropertyInfo fromProp = fromProps[i];
            PropertyInfo toProp = toType.GetProperty(fromProp.Name);
            if (toProp != null)
            {
                toProp.SetValue(this, fromProp.GetValue(namespaceClass, null), null);
            }
        }

    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
    }
    return namespaceClass;
}

Anyone do have any idea of how to deal with this kind of "recursivity reflection".

I hope eveything is understandable.

Thanks, Bye!

Edit : I think i got it solved (at least in my mind), I'll try the solution back at work tomorrow. Taking my function out of my class and using it recursively if a property is not a standard type is maybe the solution.

Answer 1

BinaryFormatter does not work in .Net 4.5 as it remembers from what type of class the instance was created. But with JSON format, it does not. JSON serializer is implemented by Microsoft in DataContractJosnSerializer.

This works:

    public static T2 DeepClone<T1, T2>(T1 obj)
    {
        DataContractJsonSerializer serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(typeof(T1));
        DataContractJsonSerializer deserializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(typeof(T2));

        using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
        {
            serializer.WriteObject(ms, obj);
            ms.Position = 0;

            return (T2)deserializer.ReadObject(ms);
        }
    }

and uses as follows:

   var b = DeepClone<A, B>(a);