Question

I want to make a deep copy of a LINQ to XML XElement. The reason I want to do this is there are some nodes in the document that I want to create modified copies of (in the same document). I don’t see a method to do this.

I could convert the element to an XML string and then reparse it, but I’m wondering if there’s a better way.

Answer 1

There is no need to reparse. One of the constructors of XElement takes another XElement and makes a deep copy of it:

XElement original = new XElement('original'); XElement deepCopy = new XElement(original); 

Here are a couple of unit tests to demonstrate:

[TestMethod] public void XElementShallowCopyShouldOnlyCopyReference() {     XElement original = new XElement('original');     XElement shallowCopy = original;     shallowCopy.Name = 'copy';     Assert.AreEqual('copy', original.Name); }  [TestMethod] public void ShouldGetXElementDeepCopyUsingConstructorArgument() {     XElement original = new XElement('original');     XElement deepCopy = new XElement(original);     deepCopy.Name = 'copy';     Assert.AreEqual('original', original.Name);     Assert.AreEqual('copy', deepCopy.Name); }