Make a Clone of My.Settings

Question

VB2012: I am trying to make a clone (not a copy) of the My.Settings class. I tried the DeepClone function found here on SO

Public Function DeepClone(Of T)(ByVal a As T) As T
    Using stream As New System.IO.MemoryStream
        Dim formatter As New BinaryFormatter
        formatter.Serialize(stream, a)
        stream.Position = 0
        Return DirectCast(formatter.Deserialize(stream), T)
    End Using
End Function

but it results in an exception

Type 'MyCompany.MyDept.TestApp.My.MySettings' in Assembly 'TestApp, Version=10.1.0.3, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' is not marked as serializable.

Being the settings are a class and saved as XML there must be a way to clone them or am I just barking up the wrong tree?

~AGP

The way you're cloning it is via Binary Serialization, which requires the `Serializable` attribute so that it can serialize all non-public fields. XML serialization only serializes the public fields which is why it doesn't require that attribute. — Visual Vincent, Jun 16 '16 at 21:00
`My.Settings.MemberwiseClone()` would create a shallow copy (if such method exists for `My.Settings`). — Visual Vincent, Jun 17 '16 at 08:07

Jonathan Allen · Answer 1 · 2016-06-16T21:58:03.870

0

The easy answer is to not use BinaryFormatter. Use XmlSerializer, DataContractSerializer, or JsonSerializer instead.

(In general the Serializable attribute and the things that use it are deprecated.)

edited Jun 16 '16 at 21:58

answered Jun 16 '16 at 21:00

Jonathan Allen

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Tried the XML approach here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1251277/net-deep-cloning-what-is-the-best-way-to-do-that and it says "MyCompany.MyDept.TestApp.My.MySettings is inaccessible due to its protection level. Only public types can be processed.". So will try another approach. – sinDizzy Jun 16 '16 at 21:16

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 25 '17 at 13:38

It's not clear why you need a "copy" of the settings. Since My.Settings is a Shared property, the settings it contains are globally accessible. However, since it loads all of its settings from the configuration files the first time a setting property is read, if you really need a second copy in memory, you could just create a new instance of the MySettings class and let it populate itself from file again. For instance, if you had a String setting called ClientName, you could do something like this:

Dim copy As New My.MySettings()
Dim clientName As String = copy.ClientName

Make a Clone of My.Settings

2 Answers2