How do you do a deep copy of an object in .NET?

Important Note

BinaryFormatter has been deprecated, and will no longer be available in .NET after November 2023. See BinaryFormatter Obsoletion Strategy

I've seen a few different approaches to this, but I use a generic utility method as such:

public static T DeepClone<T>(this T obj)
{
 using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
 {
   var formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
   formatter.Serialize(ms, obj);
   ms.Position = 0;

   return (T) formatter.Deserialize(ms);
 }
}

Notes:

• Your class MUST be marked as [Serializable] for this to work.

• Your source file must include the following code:

   using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary;
   using System.IO;
  

Building on Kilhoffer's solution...

With C# 3.0 you can create an extension method as follows:

public static class ExtensionMethods
{
    // Deep clone
    public static T DeepClone<T>(this T a)
    {
        using (MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream())
        {
            BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
            formatter.Serialize(stream, a);
            stream.Position = 0;
            return (T) formatter.Deserialize(stream);
        }
    }
}

which extends any class that's been marked as [Serializable] with a DeepClone method

MyClass copy = obj.DeepClone();

You can try this

    public static object DeepCopy(object obj)
    {
        if (obj == null)
            return null;
        Type type = obj.GetType();

        if (type.IsValueType || type == typeof(string))
        {
            return obj;
        }
        else if (type.IsArray)
        {
            Type elementType = Type.GetType(
                 type.FullName.Replace("[]", string.Empty));
            var array = obj as Array;
            Array copied = Array.CreateInstance(elementType, array.Length);
            for (int i = 0; i < array.Length; i++)
            {
                copied.SetValue(DeepCopy(array.GetValue(i)), i);
            }
            return Convert.ChangeType(copied, obj.GetType());
        }
        else if (type.IsClass)
        {

            object toret = Activator.CreateInstance(obj.GetType());
            FieldInfo[] fields = type.GetFields(BindingFlags.Public |
                        BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);
            foreach (FieldInfo field in fields)
            {
                object fieldValue = field.GetValue(obj);
                if (fieldValue == null)
                    continue;
                field.SetValue(toret, DeepCopy(fieldValue));
            }
            return toret;
        }
        else
            throw new ArgumentException("Unknown type");
    }

Thanks to DetoX83 article on code project.