Comparing object properties in c# [closed]

Question

I was looking for a snippet of code that would do something similar to help with writing unit test. Here is what I ended up using.

public static bool PublicInstancePropertiesEqual<T>(T self, T to, params string[] ignore) where T : class 
  {
     if (self != null && to != null)
     {
        Type type = typeof(T);
        List<string> ignoreList = new List<string>(ignore);
        foreach (System.Reflection.PropertyInfo pi in type.GetProperties(System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Public | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance))
        {
           if (!ignoreList.Contains(pi.Name))
           {
              object selfValue = type.GetProperty(pi.Name).GetValue(self, null);
              object toValue = type.GetProperty(pi.Name).GetValue(to, null);

              if (selfValue != toValue && (selfValue == null || !selfValue.Equals(toValue)))
              {
                 return false;
              }
           }
        }
        return true;
     }
     return self == to;
  }

EDIT:

Same code as above but uses LINQ and Extension methods :

public static bool PublicInstancePropertiesEqual<T>(this T self, T to, params string[] ignore) where T : class
{
    if (self != null && to != null)
    {
        var type = typeof(T);
        var ignoreList = new List<string>(ignore);
        var unequalProperties =
            from pi in type.GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance)
            where !ignoreList.Contains(pi.Name) && pi.GetUnderlyingType().IsSimpleType() && pi.GetIndexParameters().Length == 0
            let selfValue = type.GetProperty(pi.Name).GetValue(self, null)
            let toValue = type.GetProperty(pi.Name).GetValue(to, null)
            where selfValue != toValue && (selfValue == null || !selfValue.Equals(toValue))
            select selfValue;
        return !unequalProperties.Any();
    }
    return self == to;
}

public static class TypeExtensions
   {
      /// <summary>
      /// Determine whether a type is simple (String, Decimal, DateTime, etc) 
      /// or complex (i.e. custom class with public properties and methods).
      /// </summary>
      /// <see cref="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2442534/how-to-test-if-type-is-primitive"/>
      public static bool IsSimpleType(
         this Type type)
      {
         return
            type.IsValueType ||
            type.IsPrimitive ||
            new[]
            {
               typeof(String),
               typeof(Decimal),
               typeof(DateTime),
               typeof(DateTimeOffset),
               typeof(TimeSpan),
               typeof(Guid)
            }.Contains(type) ||
            (Convert.GetTypeCode(type) != TypeCode.Object);
      }

      public static Type GetUnderlyingType(this MemberInfo member)
      {
         switch (member.MemberType)
         {
            case MemberTypes.Event:
               return ((EventInfo)member).EventHandlerType;
            case MemberTypes.Field:
               return ((FieldInfo)member).FieldType;
            case MemberTypes.Method:
               return ((MethodInfo)member).ReturnType;
            case MemberTypes.Property:
               return ((PropertyInfo)member).PropertyType;
            default:
               throw new ArgumentException
               (
                  "Input MemberInfo must be if type EventInfo, FieldInfo, MethodInfo, or PropertyInfo"
               );
         }
      }
   }

UPDATE: The latest version of Compare-Net-Objects is located on GitHub , has NuGet package and Tutorial. It can be called like

//This is the comparison class
CompareLogic compareLogic = new CompareLogic();

ComparisonResult result = compareLogic.Compare(person1, person2);

//These will be different, write out the differences
if (!result.AreEqual)
    Console.WriteLine(result.DifferencesString);

Or if you need to change some configuration, use

CompareLogic basicComparison = new CompareLogic() 
{ Config = new ComparisonConfig()
   { MaxDifferences = propertyCount 
     //add other configurations
   }
};

Full list of configurable parameters is in ComparisonConfig.cs

Original answer:

The limitations I see in your code:

• The biggest one is that it doesn't do a deep object comparison.

• It doesn't do an element by element comparison in case properties are lists or contain lists as elements (this can go n-levels).

• It doesn't take into account that some type of properties should not be compared (e.g. a Func property used for filtering purposes, like the one in the PagedCollectionView class).

• It doesn't keep track of what properties actually were different (so you can show in your assertions).

I was looking today for some solution for unit-testing purposes to do property by property deep comparison and I ended up using: http://comparenetobjects.codeplex.com.

It is a free library with just one class which you can simply use like this:

var compareObjects = new CompareObjects()
{
    CompareChildren = true, //this turns deep compare one, otherwise it's shallow
    CompareFields = false,
    CompareReadOnly = true,
    ComparePrivateFields = false,
    ComparePrivateProperties = false,
    CompareProperties = true,
    MaxDifferences = 1,
    ElementsToIgnore = new List<string>() { "Filter" }
};

Assert.IsTrue(
    compareObjects.Compare(objectA, objectB), 
    compareObjects.DifferencesString
);

Also, it can be easily re-compiled for Silverlight. Just copy the one class into a Silverlight project and remove one or two lines of code for comparisons that are not available in Silverlight, like private members comparison.

I think it would be best to follow the pattern for Override Object#Equals()
For a better description: Read Bill Wagner's Effective C# - Item 9 I think

public override Equals(object obOther)
{
  if (null == obOther)
    return false;
  if (object.ReferenceEquals(this, obOther)
    return true;
  if (this.GetType() != obOther.GetType())
    return false;
  # private method to compare members.
  return CompareMembers(this, obOther as ThisClass);
}

• Also in methods that check for equality, you should return either true or false. either they are equal or they are not.. instead of throwing an exception, return false.
• I'd consider overriding Object#Equals.
• Even though you must have considered this, using Reflection to compare properties is supposedly slow (I dont have numbers to back this up). This is the default behavior for valueType#Equals in C# and it is recommended that you override Equals for value types and do a member wise compare for performance. (Earlier I speed-read this as you have a collection of custom Property objects... my bad.)

Update-Dec 2011:

• Of course, if the type already has a production Equals() then you need another approach.
• If you're using this to compare immutable data structures exclusively for test purposes, you shouldn't add an Equals to production classes (Someone might hose the tests by chainging the Equals implementation or you may prevent creation of a production-required Equals implementation).

If performance doesn't matter, you could serialize them and compare the results:

var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(TheObjectType));
StringWriter serialized1 = new StringWriter(), serialized2 = new StringWriter();
serializer.Serialize(serialized1, obj1);
serializer.Serialize(serialized2, obj2);
bool areEqual = serialized1.ToString() == serialized2.ToString();

I think the answer of Big T was quite good but the deep comparison was missing, so I tweaked it a little bit:

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

/// <summary>Comparison class.</summary>
public static class Compare
{
    /// <summary>Compare the public instance properties. Uses deep comparison.</summary>
    /// <param name="self">The reference object.</param>
    /// <param name="to">The object to compare.</param>
    /// <param name="ignore">Ignore property with name.</param>
    /// <typeparam name="T">Type of objects.</typeparam>
    /// <returns><see cref="bool">True</see> if both objects are equal, else <see cref="bool">false</see>.</returns>
    public static bool PublicInstancePropertiesEqual<T>(T self, T to, params string[] ignore) where T : class
    {
        if (self != null && to != null)
        {
            var type = self.GetType();
            var ignoreList = new List<string>(ignore);
            foreach (var pi in type.GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance))
            {
                if (ignoreList.Contains(pi.Name))
                {
                    continue;
                }

                var selfValue = type.GetProperty(pi.Name).GetValue(self, null);
                var toValue = type.GetProperty(pi.Name).GetValue(to, null);

                if (pi.PropertyType.IsClass && !pi.PropertyType.Module.ScopeName.Equals("CommonLanguageRuntimeLibrary"))
                {
                    // Check of "CommonLanguageRuntimeLibrary" is needed because string is also a class
                    if (PublicInstancePropertiesEqual(selfValue, toValue, ignore))
                    {
                        continue;
                    }

                    return false;
                }

                if (selfValue != toValue && (selfValue == null || !selfValue.Equals(toValue)))
                {
                    return false;
                }
            }

            return true;
        }

        return self == to;
    }
}