Cloning a DTO in C#

Question

Currently to clone my DTOs I'm implementing IClonable, but this (and the alternatives like a clone ctor) mean that I need to add implementation logic into my (otherwise) data-only object.

Is there a better way to clone DTOs, or is including clone logic considered to be OK?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/536349/why-no-icloneablet — Mitch Wheat, Nov 01 '10 at 01:18
"ICloneable is considered a bad API now, since it does not specify whether the result is a deep or a shallow copy" — Mitch Wheat, Nov 01 '10 at 01:18
Why wouldn't it be necessary? I can think of a lot of situations where you want to create a second copy data set that you can change independent of the original. — Ben Hughes, Nov 02 '10 at 22:26

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 01 '10 at 01:22

3

Such logic is so basic that I think it's stretching it to call it implementation logic. It may simply make much more sense to clone in this way:

You're able to call MemberwiseClone to make the shallow copy
The DTO knows everything it needs to clone itself
You'll not have to create separate objects for this or helpers that depend on reflection

Not adding cloning logic into DTOs would to me be an obvious example of following architectural patterns too far.

answered Nov 01 '10 at 01:22

steinar

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Thanks - that's pretty much the view I took, but I'm relatively new to using DTOs and wanted to make sure I wasn't doing something silly – Ben Hughes Nov 01 '10 at 01:24

Cloning a DTO in C#

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