I've got some plain-old classes with a bunch of simple properties (simple {get; set;}
declarations). All the properties are nullable (or equivalently, reference types).
For example:
class POCO
{
int? Field1 { get; set; }
string Field2 { get; set; }
... etc ...
}
I've got a scenario where I'm building these POCOs piecemeal, and at the end I'd like to get one of them with all the non-null fields.
Some illustrative code:
POCO o1 = LoadFields1To3();
POCO o2 = LoadFields4To5();
POCO o3 = LoadFields6To9();
... etc ...
We're in this scenario because some of the fields are loaded from SQL (and sometimes distinct queries), while some are loaded from in memory data structures. I'm re-using the POCO type here to avoid a bunch of otherwise pointless classes (a static type being quite useful for Dapper, and just in general).
What I'm looking for is a nice way to coalesce these objects' properties into a single one with the non-null properties.
Something like:
POCO final = o1.UnionProperties(o2).UnionProperties(o3) // and so on
I am able to guarantee that no field is non-null on more than one object. Though I'd assume a solution would take the left-most non-null field, it's not actually necessary.
I know I can write some reflection code to do this, but it's a bit nasty and slow.
This does need to be generically applicable, as while I never intend to coalesce objects of different types, there are a very large number of types that this method would be applicable to.
I was wondering if there isn't some cleverer way, perhaps abusing dynamic?
I gather (ok, I asked you) that the key objectives here are:
- performance (reflection seeming too slow)
- low maintenance (want to avoid a very manual copy-method, or complicated properties)
The following uses meta-programming to do whatever it can on the fly at runtime, compiling itself to a typed delegate (Action<POCO, POCO>
) for efficient re-use:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Reflection.Emit;
public class SamplePoco
{
public int? Field1 { get; set; }
public string Field2 { get; set; }
// lots and lots more properties here
}
static class Program
{
static void Main()
{
var obj1 = new SamplePoco { Field1 = 123 };
var obj2 = new SamplePoco { Field2 = "abc" };
var merged = Merger.Merge(obj1, obj2);
Console.WriteLine(merged.Field1);
Console.WriteLine(merged.Field2);
}
}
static class Merger
{
public static T Merge<T>(params T[] sources) where T : class, new()
{
var merge = MergerImpl<T>.merge;
var obj = new T();
for (int i = 0; i < sources.Length; i++) merge(sources[i], obj);
return obj;
}
static class MergerImpl<T> where T : class, new()
{
internal static readonly Action<T, T> merge;
static MergerImpl()
{
var method = new DynamicMethod("Merge", null, new[] { typeof(T), typeof(T) }, typeof(T));
var il = method.GetILGenerator();
Dictionary<Type, LocalBuilder> locals = new Dictionary<Type, LocalBuilder>();
foreach (var prop in typeof(T).GetProperties())
{
var propType = prop.PropertyType;
if (propType.IsValueType && Nullable.GetUnderlyingType(propType) == null)
{
continue; // int, instead of int? etc - skip
}
il.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_1); // [target]
il.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0); // [target][source]
il.EmitCall(OpCodes.Callvirt, prop.GetGetMethod(), null); // [target][value]
il.Emit(OpCodes.Dup); // [target][value][value]
Label nonNull = il.DefineLabel(), end = il.DefineLabel();
if (propType.IsValueType)
{ // int? etc - Nullable<T> - hit .Value
LocalBuilder local;
if (!locals.TryGetValue(propType, out local))
{
local = il.DeclareLocal(propType);
locals.Add(propType, local);
}
// need a ref to use it for the static-call
il.Emit(OpCodes.Stloc, local); // [target][value]
il.Emit(OpCodes.Ldloca, local); // [target][value][value*]
var hasValue = propType.GetProperty("HasValue").GetGetMethod();
il.EmitCall(OpCodes.Call, hasValue, null); // [target][value][value.HasValue]
}
il.Emit(OpCodes.Brtrue_S, nonNull); // [target][value]
il.Emit(OpCodes.Pop); // [target]
il.Emit(OpCodes.Pop); // nix
il.Emit(OpCodes.Br_S, end); // nix
il.MarkLabel(nonNull); // (incoming) [target][value]
il.EmitCall(OpCodes.Callvirt, prop.GetSetMethod(), null); // nix
il.MarkLabel(end); // (incoming) nix
}
il.Emit(OpCodes.Ret);
merge = (Action<T, T>)method.CreateDelegate(typeof(Action<T, T>));
}
}
}