I am trying to use this framework for an entity class which is passed to a client via wcf service, it’s giving following error

“Type ‘OX.Copyable.Copyable’ cannot be serialized. Consider marking it with the DataContractAttribute attribute, and marking all of its members you want serialized with the DataMemberAttribute attribute. If the type is a collection, consider marking it with the CollectionDataContractAttribute. See the Microsoft .NET Framework documentation for other supported types. “

Please help me out in solving this problem.

Thanks, Mohan

Support for custom “copyers” could be desirable. I haven’t seen any real use for it in my applications, but I would welcome any suggestions. I would expect a suggestion to include an interface that can be implemented to support custom copying, as well as modification of the Copyable base class to support custom copy behavior.

Just fork on GitHub and get on with it!

    private static object Clone(this object instance, VisitedGraph visited, object copy)
    {
        if (visited.ContainsKey(instance))
            return visited[instance];
        else
            visited.Add(instance, copy);

    Type type = instance.GetType();

    if (instance.GetType().Name == "DataTable")
    {
        DataTable dt = (DataTable)instance;
        copy = dt.Copy();
    }
    else if (instance.GetType().Name == "DataSet")
    {
        DataSet ds = (DataSet)instance;
        copy = ds.Copy();
    }
    else
    {
        while (type != null)
        {
            foreach (FieldInfo field in type.GetFields(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance))
            {
                object value = field.GetValue(instance);
                if (visited.ContainsKey(value))
                    field.SetValue(copy, visited[value]);
                else
                    field.SetValue(copy, value.Clone(visited));
            }

            type = type.BaseType;
        }
    }

    return copy;
}

thanks a lot for noticing the issue, and sharing a solution. It would be great if you could fork Copyable on Github, implement your changes, and send me a pull request so we can get it into the master branch (preferably also with a unit test that reproduces the specific problem you had).

private static IEnumerable GetInstanceProviders(Assembly assembly) { System.Type[] types = null; try { types = assembly.GetTypes(); } catch { }

        if (types != null)
        { 
            foreach (Type t in types)
            {
                if (typeof(IInstanceProvider).IsAssignableFrom(t))
                {
                    IInstanceProvider instance = null;
                    try
                    {
                        instance = (IInstanceProvider)Activator.CreateInstance(t);
                    }
                    catch { } // Ignore provider if it cannot be created
                    if (instance != null)
                        yield return instance;
                }
            }
        }
    }