How to map efficiently objects in .NET
What to do when we have 2 similar data structures and we need to build one structure based on another? How to do it better and more efficiently? The first idea is to rewrite all properties manually one by one. This solution is usually the most efficient. It is also the most flexible. The disadvantage is the workload needed for implementation, and any change in the definition of data structures requires changes in the mapping code. That's why there are a lot of auto mapping solutions. Automapper simplifies the mapping code to one line. This solution can automatically map properties with the same or similar names. It also allows you to manually define the mapping of certain fragments. Automapper is definitely worth where the structures are identical or almost identical, whereas if the structures have different - often instead of writing the automaper configuration code, it is much easier to write your own mapper. In test I compared the performance of custom mapper and two free libra