AutoMapper flattens Domain Models but does it do the opposite? If not, what does?

Question

I've been reading up on AutoMapper because of a response to one of my earlier questions here.

It says that AutoMapper flattens complex domain models, but I need something that does the opposite. I need to wire up my view models (flattened domain models) to the complex domain models so that I can quickly transform a view model into a domain model.

Is there anything similar to AutoMapper that takes a view model and makes it into a complex domain model?

Answer 1

You do!. You create a MapToModel method where you do the right-hand/left-hand coding and sync the two together.

public MyModel MapToModel(MyViewModelForm vmf)
{
  //new up MyModel model;
  model.foo = vmf.foo;

  return model;
}

If applications coded themselves, what exactly would we do for a living...?

Answer 2

Not really, because it would have to be extremely conventional to be useful. It's easy to discern patterns when flattening, but the other way 'round... just too much custom logic.