Tim Laughlin's Everything VB.NET Blog

Copying an instance of a class object

I recently had a need to copy the instance of a fairly complex class object.  More specifically what wanted was to load and instance of the object, from a data source.  The object had about 40 properties some of which where collections of other classes. 

So creating a new instance of the object then setting each property would be more time consuming and less elegant that I would like.  Doing as standard set would just set a reference to the first object.  So changes on the second object would made on the first instance.  This was not the behavior I wanted either. 

After doing a Google search and combining a few examples this what I cam up with.

    Public Sub CopyObject( _
        ByVal pObjectType As Type, _
        ByVal pOriginalObject As Object, _
        ByRef pNewObject As Object)

        Dim ArPoperties() As Reflection.PropertyInfo = _
        pObjectType.GetProperties(Reflection.BindingFlags.Public Or _
        Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance)
        Dim ObjPropItem As Reflection.PropertyInfo
        For Each ObjPropItem In ArPoperties
            If ObjPropItem.CanWrite Then
                ObjPropItem.SetValue(pNewObject, _
                ObjPropItem.GetValue(pOriginalObject, Nothing), Nothing)
            End If
        Next
    End Sub

As is the goal if this blog.  I hope you find this useful.