Indiko.Object.Comparison

Build Status

Install the library

Available on NuGet.

Install with the dotnet CLI: dotnet add package Indiko.Object.Comparison, or through the NuGet Package Manager in Visual Studio.

Overview

This library is designed for comparing two objects of the same or different types. The main functionality is encapsulated in the following four classes:

• ObjectExtensions: Provides a static method that extends object type for comparison.
• ComparisonReport: Holds the result of the comparison between two objects.
• Difference: Details the difference in a particular property between two objects.
• ObjectComparer: Handles the core logic of comparing objects.

ObjectExtensions

This static class contains a single extension method CompareTo, which takes two objects, and an optional list of properties to ignore during comparison. The method returns a ComparisonReport.

Usage

var report = obj1.CompareTo(obj2);

or

var report = obj1.CompareTo(obj2, new List<string>{"PropertyToIgnore"});

ComparisonReport

A class that contains the result of a comparison operation. It has two properties:

• AreEqual: A boolean indicating if the objects are equal.
• Differences: A list of Difference objects indicating which properties differ between the two objects.

Difference

Represents a single difference between the compared objects. Holds information about:

• PropertyName: The property that differs.
• SourceValue: The value of the property in the source object.
• DestinationValue: The value of the property in the destination object.
• SourceType: The type of the property in the source object.
• DestinationType: The type of the property in the destination object.

ObjectComparer

This static class does the heavy lifting of object comparison. It has a static method Compare that takes two generic objects and an optional list of properties to ignore.

The method returns a ComparisonReport that can be further examined to understand how the two objects differ.

Core Logic

1. Initialize a ComparisonReport object, setting AreEqual to true.
2. Compare each property of the source object with the destination object.
3. If a property is only present in one object or the values are different, update ComparisonReport accordingly.

Usage

This is mainly used internally by ObjectExtensions, but can also be used directly.

var report = ObjectComparer.Compare(obj1, obj2);

or

var report = ObjectComparer.Compare(obj1, obj2, new List<string>{"PropertyToIgnore"});