Creating a copy of an object in C# [duplicate]

Question

You could do:

class myClass : ICloneable
{
    public String test;
    public object Clone()
    {
        return this.MemberwiseClone();
    }
}

then you can do

myClass a = new myClass();
myClass b = (myClass)a.Clone();

N.B. MemberwiseClone() Creates a shallow copy of the current System.Object.

There is no built-in way. You can have MyClass implement the IClonable interface (but it is sort of deprecated) or just write your own Copy/Clone method. In either case you will have to write some code.

For big objects you could consider Serialization + Deserialization (through a MemoryStream), just to reuse existing code.

Whatever the method, think carefully about what "a copy" means exactly. How deep should it go, are there Id fields to be excepted etc.

The easiest way to do this is writing a copy constructor in the MyClass class.

Something like this:

namespace Example
{
    class MyClass
    {
        public int val;

        public MyClass()
        {
        }

        public MyClass(MyClass other)
        {
            val = other.val;
        }
    }
}

The second constructor simply accepts a parameter of his own type (the one you want to copy) and creates a new object assigned with the same value

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        MyClass objectA = new MyClass();
        MyClass objectB = new MyClass(objectA);
        objectA.val = 10;
        objectB.val = 20;
        Console.WriteLine("objectA.val = {0}", objectA.val);
        Console.WriteLine("objectB.val = {0}", objectB.val);
        Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

output:

objectA.val = 10

objectB.val = 20               

There's already a question about this, you could perhaps read it

Deep cloning objects

There's no Clone() method as it exists in Java for example, but you could include a copy constructor in your clases, that's another good approach.

class A
{
  private int attr

  public int Attr
  {
     get { return attr; }
     set { attr = value }
  }

  public A()
  {
  }

  public A(A p)
  {
     this.attr = p.Attr;
  }  
}

This would be an example, copying the member 'Attr' when building the new object.