Question

I’m taking an object and writing its properties to a model, then showing the model in my view for editing. Afterwards, the user hits submit and the model is posted back to my controller. I would now like to take the model’s properties and write them back to the object.

I am considering using reflection to do so, but I am a bit wary. Thought I would check if there is a more obvious answer.

Code:

//OrderDetailsModel
public OrderDetailsModel(Order order)
{
    CompletionDateTime = order.CompletionDateTime;
    CreateDateTime = order.CreateDateTime;
    UpdateDateTime = order.UpdateDateTime;
    BusinessArea = order.BusinessArea;
    Comment = order.Comment;
    CostCenter = order.CostCenter;
    CreateUsername = order.CreateUsername;
    Customer = order.Customer;
    IncidentNumber = order.IncidentNumber;
    OrderID = order.ID;
    OrderStatus = order.OrderStatus;
    ProjectName = order.ProjectName;
    ProjectNumber = order.ProjectNumber;
    ProjectSubcode = order.ProjectSubcode;
    UpdateUsername = order.UpdateUsername;
    Description = order.Description;
}

//OrdersController
public ActionResult SaveOrderDetails(OrderDetailsModel orderDetailsModel)
{
    Order order = WorkflowManager.GetOrderByID(orderDetailsModel.OrderID);

    foreach(PropertyInfo propertyInfo in orderDetailsModel.GetType().GetProperties)
    {
         //Write properties back.
    }

    return null;
}

Thoughts on how to do this?

Answer 1

Have a look at AutoMapper. It makes short work of this left hand<->right hand coding.

Here’s an example:

Mapper.CreateMap<Order, OrderDetailsModel>();
OrderDetailsModel dto = Mapper.Map<Order, OrderDetailsModel >(order);