Let's say I have two anonymous objects like this:
var objA = new { test = "test", blah = "blah" };
var objB = new { foo = "foo", bar = "bar" };
I want to combine them to get:
new { test = "test", blah = "blah", foo = "foo", bar = "bar" };
I won't know what the properties are for both objA and objB at compile time.
I want this to be like jquery's extend method.
Anybody know of a library or a .net framework class that can help me do this?
If you truly do mean dynamic in the C# 4.0 sense, then you can do something like:
static dynamic Combine(dynamic item1, dynamic item2)
{
var dictionary1 = (IDictionary<string, object>)item1;
var dictionary2 = (IDictionary<string, object>)item2;
var result = new ExpandoObject();
var d = result as IDictionary<string, object>; //work with the Expando as a Dictionary
foreach (var pair in dictionary1.Concat(dictionary2))
{
d[pair.Key] = pair.Value;
}
return result;
}
You could even write a version using reflection which takes two objects (not dynamic) and returns a dynamic.
I have tried Merge Two Objects into an Anonymous Type by Kyle Finley and it is working perfect.
With the TypeMerger
the merging is as simple as
var obj1 = new {foo = "foo"};
var obj2 = new {bar = "bar"};
var mergedObject = TypeMerger.MergeTypes(obj1 , obj2 );
That's it you got the merged object, apart from that, there is a provision to ignore specific properties too.
Using TypeDescriptor
As mentioned in comments, Luke Foust solution does not work with anonymous types.
The cast to Dictionary does not work, I propose to construct the Dictionaries using the TypeDescriptor.GetProperties method:
public static dynamic CombineDynamics(object object1, object object2)
{
IDictionary<string, object> dictionary1 = GetKeyValueMap(object1);
IDictionary<string, object> dictionary2 = GetKeyValueMap(object2);
var result = new ExpandoObject();
var d = result as IDictionary<string, object>;
foreach (var pair in dictionary1.Concat(dictionary2))
{
d[pair.Key] = pair.Value;
}
return result;
}
private static IDictionary<string, object> GetKeyValueMap(object values)
{
if (values == null)
{
return new Dictionary<string, object>();
}
var map = values as IDictionary<string, object>;
if (map == null)
{
return map;
}
map = new Dictionary<string, object>();
foreach (PropertyDescriptor descriptor in TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(values))
{
map.Add(descriptor.Name, descriptor.GetValue(values));
}
return map;
}
It's now working with anonymous types:
var a = new {foo = "foo"};
var b = new {bar = "bar"};
var c = CombineDynamics(a, b);
string foobar = c.foo + c.bar;
Notes:
My GetKeyValueMap method is based on the RouteValueDictionary class (System.Web.Routing). I've rewritten it (using ILSpy to disassemble it) because I think that a System.Web
class has nothing to do with object merging.