How would I get the equivalent C# code that will recreate my runtime object in its current state?

Question

Are there any .Net libraries which can take an object and serialize it to a Stream, as the C# code that would create the object?

Stream fs = ...;

CSharpFormatter formatter = new CSharpFormatter();

var p = new Person { Name = "Russ", Address = "1024 Oak St" };

formatter.Serialize(fs, p);

At the end of this, fs would end up with a string like this written to it:

new Person { Name = "Russ", Address = "1024 Oak St" };

I think something like this would be very useful in writing unit tests from tricky runtime cases.

Answer 1

You could potentially hack a JSON serializer to do this. Given your Person object, a JSON Serializer might return something like:

{"name":"Russ","Address":"1024 Oak St"}

From there, it's fairly straightforward to use Split() and Replace() to get close to what you want:

{ Name = "Russ", Address = "1024 Oak St" }

The rest is just window dressing.

Answer 2

Only a partial answer but you can use classes in the System.CodeDom namespace to create the code, such as this example , then use GenerateCodeFromXXX methods in the CSharpCodeProvider class to emit C#.

Another way is using the T4 Text Template , such as this walkthrough . and reflection but it requires Visual Studio.