Question

Given two objected that do not contain reference loops within them, do you know a method that tests their equality in a “generic” way (through reflection)?

I basically want the same semantics as struct equivalence, only on classes.

Answer 1

I think there is no such method available in the framework, but it’s fairly easily written. Perhaps not the shortest implementation but is seems to do the job:

private bool AreEqual(object x, object y)
{
    // if both are null, they are equal
    if (x == null && y == null)
    {
        return true;
    }
    // if one of them are null, they are not equal
    else if (x == null || y == null)
    {
        return false;
    }

    // if they are of different types, they can't be compared
    if (x.GetType() != y.GetType())
    {
        throw new InvalidOperationException("x and y must be of the same type");
    }

    Type type = x.GetType();
    PropertyInfo[] properties = type.GetProperties();

    for (int i = 0; i < properties.Length; i++)
    {
        // compare only properties that requires no parameters
        if (properties[i].GetGetMethod().GetParameters().Length == 0)
        {
            object xValue = properties[i].GetValue(x, null);
            object yValue = properties[i].GetValue(y, null);

            if (properties[i].PropertyType.IsValueType && !xValue.Equals(yValue))
            {
                return false;
            }
            else if (!properties[i].PropertyType.IsValueType)
            {
                if (!AreEqual(xValue, yValue))
                {
                    return false;
                }
            } // if
        } // if
    } // for

    return true;

}