Helper in Order to Copy Non Null Properties from Object to Another

Helper in order to copy non null properties from object to another

I supose you already have a solution, since a lot of time has happened since you asked. However, it is not marked as solved, and maybe I can help other users.

Have you tried by defining a subclass of the BeanUtilsBean of the org.commons.beanutils package? Actually, BeanUtils uses this class, so this is an improvement of the solution proposed by dfa.

Checking at the source code of that class, I think you can overwrite the copyProperty method, by checking for null values and doing nothing if the value is null.

Something like this :

package foo.bar.copy;
import java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException;
import org.apache.commons.beanutils.BeanUtilsBean;

public class NullAwareBeanUtilsBean extends BeanUtilsBean{

    @Override
    public void copyProperty(Object dest, String name, Object value)
            throws IllegalAccessException, InvocationTargetException {
        if(value==null)return;
        super.copyProperty(dest, name, value);
    }

}

Then you can just instantiate a NullAwareBeanUtilsBean and use it to copy your beans, for example:

BeanUtilsBean notNull=new NullAwareBeanUtilsBean();
notNull.copyProperties(dest, orig);

Copy non-null properties from one object to another using BeanUtils or similar

I ended up using Spring BeanUtils library. Here is my working method:

import org.springframework.beans.BeanWrapper;
import org.springframework.beans.BeanWrapperImpl;

import java.lang.reflect.Field;
import java.util.Collection;

public class MyBeansUtil<T> {
    public T copyNonNullProperties(T target, T in) {
        if (in == null || target == null || target.getClass() != in.getClass()) return null;

        final BeanWrapper src = new BeanWrapperImpl(in);
        final BeanWrapper trg = new BeanWrapperImpl(target);

        for (final Field property : target.getClass().getDeclaredFields()) {
            Object providedObject = src.getPropertyValue(property.getName());
            if (providedObject != null && !(providedObject instanceof Collection<?>)) {
                trg.setPropertyValue(
                        property.getName(),
                        providedObject);
            }
        }
        return target;
    }
}

It works fine, but notice that it ignores fields that are collections. That's on purpose, I handle them separately.

How to copy values of all attributes from one instance of an object to another if they are not null or empty

You can use reflection to get all the instance fields and use Field#set to copy over non-null values.

try {
    for (Field field : Person.class.getDeclaredFields()) {
        if (!Modifier.isStatic(field.getModifiers())) {
            field.setAccessible(true);
            Object val = field.get(obj2);
            if (val != null) {
                field.set(obj1, val);
            }
        }
    }
    System.out.println(obj1);
} catch (IllegalAccessException e) {
    // Handle exception
}

Demo

how to copy properties from one object to another with different values C#

Deep cloning can be achieved easily through serialization, however to only copy across non-null fields needs more conditional logic, In this case I call this a Coalesce so I've named my Method CoalesceTo. You could refactor this into an extension method if you wanted to, but I wouldn't recommend it, instead put this inside a static helper class. As useful as this might be, I don't encourage it as your "goto" for a production business runtime.

Using Reflection for these types of solutions is usually the most inefficient mechanism, but it gives us a lot of flexibility and is great for mocking, prototyping and quick unit test expressions.

• Although not in this example, it would be easy to add in checks to exclude [Obsolete] properties for advanced scenarios

The following example uses Property Name comparison, so you don't have to pass in objects of the same type. Notice that IsNull and IsValueType methods have been created to encapsulate those concepts, simplifying tweaks you might want to make to this method.

• This method also checks that properties can be read/written before proceeding, which allows us to support readonly properties on the source object, and of course we don't try to write to readonly properties.
• The final value parse and write is wrapped in a try catch statement that is suppressing any errors, It takes a bit of tweaking to get code like this to work universally, but it should work fine for simple type definitions.

/// <summary>
/// Deep Copy the top level properties from this object only if the corresponding property on the target object IS NULL.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="source">the source object to copy from</param>
/// <param name="target">the target object to update</param>
/// <returns>A reference to the Target instance for chaining, no changes to this instance.</returns>
public static void CoalesceTo(object source, object target, StringComparison propertyComparison = StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)
{
    var sourceType = source.GetType();
    var targetType = target.GetType();
    var targetProperties = targetType.GetProperties();
    foreach(var sourceProp in sourceType.GetProperties())
    {
        if(sourceProp.CanRead)
        {
            var sourceValue = sourceProp.GetValue(source);

            // Don't copy across nulls or defaults
            if (!IsNull(sourceValue, sourceProp.PropertyType))
            {
                var targetProp = targetProperties.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Name.Equals(sourceProp.Name, propertyComparison));
                if (targetProp != null && targetProp.CanWrite)
                {
                    if (!targetProp.CanRead)
                        continue; // special case, if we cannot verify the destination, assume it has a value.
                    else if (targetProp.PropertyType.IsArray || targetProp.PropertyType.IsGenericType // It is ICollection<T> or IEnumerable<T>
                                                                && targetProp.PropertyType.GenericTypeArguments.Any()
                                                                && targetProp.PropertyType.GetGenericTypeDefinition() != typeof(Nullable<>) // because that will also resolve GetElementType!
                            )
                        continue; // special case, skip arrays and collections...
                    else
                    {
                        // You can do better than this, for now if conversion fails, just skip it
                        try
                        {
                            var existingValue = targetProp.GetValue(target);
                            if (IsValueType(targetProp.PropertyType))
                            {
                                // check that the destination is NOT already set.
                                if (IsNull(existingValue, targetProp.PropertyType))
                                {
                                    // we do not overwrite a non-null destination value
                                    object targetValue = sourceValue;
                                    if (!targetProp.PropertyType.IsAssignableFrom(sourceProp.PropertyType))
                                    {
                                        // TODO: handle specific types that don't go across.... or try some brute force type conversions if neccessary
                                        if (targetProp.PropertyType == typeof(string))
                                            targetValue = targetValue.ToString();
                                        else 
                                            targetValue = Convert.ChangeType(targetValue, targetProp.PropertyType);
                                    }

                                    targetProp.SetValue(target, targetValue);
                                }
                            }
                            else if (!IsValueType(sourceProp.PropertyType))
                            {
                                // deep clone
                                if (existingValue == null)
                                    existingValue = Activator.CreateInstance(targetProp.PropertyType);

                                CoalesceTo(sourceValue, existingValue);
                            }
                        }
                        catch (Exception)
                        {
                            // suppress exceptions, don't set a field that we can't set
                        }

                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

/// <summary>
/// Check if a boxed value is null or not
/// </summary>
/// <remarks>
/// Evaluate your own logic or definition of null in here.
/// </remarks>
/// <param name="value">Value to inspect</param>
/// <param name="valueType">Type of the value, pass it in if you have it, otherwise it will be resolved through reflection</param>
/// <returns>True if the value is null or primitive default, otherwise False</returns>
public static bool IsNull(object value, Type valueType = null)
{
    if (value is null)
        return true;

    if (valueType == null) valueType = value.GetType();

    if (valueType.IsPrimitive || valueType.IsEnum || valueType.IsValueType)
    {
        // Handle nullable types like float? or Nullable<Int>
        if (valueType.IsGenericType)
            return value is null;
        else
            return Activator.CreateInstance(valueType).Equals(value);
    }

    // treat empty string as null!
    if (value is string s)
        return String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(s);

    return false;
}
/// <summary>
/// Check if a type should be copied by value or if it is a complexe type that should be deep cloned
/// </summary>
/// <remarks>
/// Evaluate your own logic or definition of Object vs Value/Primitive here.
/// </remarks>
/// <param name="valueType">Type of the value to check</param>
/// <returns>True if values of this type can be straight copied, false if they should be deep cloned</returns>
public static bool IsValueType(Type valueType)
{
    // TODO: any specific business types that you want to treat as value types?

    // Standard .Net Types that can be treated as value types
    if (valueType.IsPrimitive || valueType.IsEnum || valueType.IsValueType || valueType == typeof(string))
        return true;

    // Support Nullable Types as Value types (Type.IsValueType) should deal with this, but just in case
    if (valueType.HasElementType // It is array/enumerable/nullable
        && valueType.IsGenericType && valueType.GetGenericTypeDefinition() == typeof(Nullable<>))
        return true;

    return false;
}

Because we are using reflection here, we cant take advantage of optimisations that Generics could offer us. If you wanted to adapt this to a production environment, consider using T4 templates to script out a Generic typed version of this logic as extension methods to your business types.

Deep Cloning -

You'll notice I specifically skip arrays and other IEnumerable structures... There's a whole can of worms in supporting them, it might be better to not let the one method attempt a Deep copy, so take the nested call to CoalesceTo out, then call the clone method on each object in the tree.

The problem with arrays/collections/lists is that before you could clone, you would need to identify a way to synchronise the collection in the source with the collection in the target, you could make a convention based on an Id field or some kind of attribute like [KeyAttribute] but that sort of implementation needs to be highly specific to your business logic and is outside of the scope of this already monstrous post ;)

Types like Decimal and DateTime are problematic in these types of scenarios, they should not be compared to null, instead we have to compare them to their default type states, again we can't use the generic default operator or value in this case because the type can only be resolved at runtime.

So I've changed your classes to include an example of how DateTimeOffset is handled by this logic:

public class Employee
{
    public int EmployeeID { get; set; }
    public string EmployeeName { get; set; }
    public DateTimeOffset Date { get; set; }
    public float? Capacity { get; set; }
    Nullable<int> MaxShift { get; set; }
    public Address ContactAddress { get; set; }
}

public class Address
{
    public string Address1 { get; set; }
    public string City { get; set; }
    public string State { get; set; }
    public string ZipCode { get; set; }
}

public static  void TestMethod1()
{
    Employee employee = new Employee();
    employee.EmployeeID = 100;
    employee.EmployeeName = "John";
    employee.Capacity = 26.2f;
    employee.MaxShift = 8;
    employee.Date = new DateTime(2020,1,22);
    employee.ContactAddress = new Address();
    employee.ContactAddress.Address1 = "Park Ave";
    employee.ContactAddress.City = "New York";
    employee.ContactAddress.State = "NewYork";
    employee.ContactAddress.ZipCode = "10002";

    Employee employeeCopy = new Employee();
    employeeCopy.EmployeeID = 101;
    employeeCopy.EmployeeName = "Tom";
    employeeCopy.ContactAddress = new Address();

    CoalesceTo(employee, employeeCopy);
}

This results in the following object graph:

{
  "EmployeeID": 101,
  "EmployeeName": "Tom",
  "Date": "2020-01-22T00:00:00+11:00",
  "Capacity":26.2,
  "MaxShift":8,
  "ContactAddress": {
    "Address1": "Park Ave",
    "City": "New York",
    "State": "NewYork",
    "ZipCode": "10002"
  }
}

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