Question

I have the following problem. I want to be able to set this to the passed reference without using reflection, can this be done?

//partial class of a Linq-to-SQL class 
public partial class Product
{
   public Product (Product product, List<ProductAttributes> productAttributes)
   {
      // without individually setting all the properties

      //then just set any other properties
      this.ProductAttributes = productAttributes;
   }
}

Answer 1

You cannot set this in reference types (and setting it in value types is probably not something to be condoned). If what you’re looking to do is a shallow (or deep) copy of the object’s fields or properties, then you have two choices:

1. Manually
2. Reflection

Neither the language nor the runtime have any built-in facility for automating shallow or deep copying, and for good reason. It would be impossible to determine what that would look like for any given type.