recursively create custom complex object

Question

I would like to recursively build an complex object.

public class Name
{
   public string firstName {get;set;}
   public string lastName {get;set;}
}

public class Address
{
   public string city {get;set;}
   public string state {get;set;}
   public string street {get;set;}
   public string zip {get;set;}
}

public class Customer
{
   public Name customerName {get;set;}
   public Address customerAddress {get;set;}
   public Guid id {get;set;}
}

Lets say that Customer lives in an assembly that I'm loading on the fly :) I want to instantiate a type of Customer and populate its properties. Customer object has more custom objects and a Guid property. How can I use recursion to create the Customer object and its nested objects. I have some code below where I stumbled into the fact that I should be using recursion.

static object TraversePropertyInfo(object obj, Assembly assembly)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(obj.GetType().Name);

        foreach(PropertyInfo pi in obj.GetType().GetProperties())
        {
            if(pi.PropertyType.IsClass && pi.PropertyType.Namespace != "System")
            {
                if(pi.PropertyType.UnderlyingSystemType.GenericTypeArguments.Count() > 0)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("\tIList<{0}>", pi.Name);
                }
                else
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("\t{0}\t<class>", pi.Name);
                    object child = Activator.CreateInstance(assembly.GetType(pi.PropertyType.FullName));  // create the child instance
                    obj.GetType().GetProperty(pi.Name).SetValue(obj, child);                              // set the child on the parent
                    // but the child can have children...
                    // I should be using recurrsion here 
                }
            }
            else
            {
                Console.WriteLine("\t{0}\t{1}", pi.Name, pi.PropertyType);
            }
        }
        return obj;
    }

Answer 1

void Main()
{
    Create<Customer>().Dump();
}

// Define other methods and classes here

public class Name
{
   public string Firstname { get; set; }
   public string Lastname { get; set; }
}

public class Address
{
   public string City { get; set; }
   public string State { get; set; }
   public string Street { get; set; }
   public string Zip { get; set; }
}

public class Customer
{
   public Name CustomerName { get; set; }
   public Address CustomerAddress { get; set; }
   public Guid Id { get; set; }
}

public static T Create<T>()
{
    var type = typeof(T);

    return (T)Create(type);
}

public static object Create(Type type)
{
    var obj = Activator.CreateInstance(type);

    foreach(var property in type.GetProperties())
    {
        var propertyType = property.PropertyType;

        if (propertyType.IsClass 
            && string.IsNullOrEmpty(propertyType.Namespace)
            || (!propertyType.Namespace.Equals("System") 
                && !propertyType.Namespace.StartsWith("System.")))
        {
            var child = Create(propertyType);

            property.SetValue(obj, child);
        }
    }

    return obj;
}

Answer 2

Maybe this will work:

static object TraversePropertyInfo(object obj, Assembly assembly)
{
    Console.WriteLine(obj.GetType().Name);
    // we stop the iteration when we reached the root-class "object" 
    // which won´t add any custom properties
    if (obj.GetType() == typeof(object) return obj;


    foreach(PropertyInfo pi in obj.GetType().GetProperties())
    {
        if(pi.PropertyType.IsClass && pi.PropertyType.Namespace != "System")
        {
            if(pi.PropertyType.UnderlyingSystemType.GenericTypeArguments.Count() > 0)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("\tIList<{0}>", pi.Name);
            }
            else
            {
                Console.WriteLine("\t{0}\t<class>", pi.Name);
                object child = Activator.CreateInstance(assembly.GetType(pi.PropertyType.FullName));  // create the child instance
                child = TraversePropertyInfo(child, child.GetType().Assembly);
                obj.GetType().GetProperty(pi.Name).SetValue(obj, child);                              // set the child on the parent
                // this will do the recursion
                return obj;
            }
        }
        else
        {
            Console.WriteLine("\t{0}\t{1}", pi.Name, pi.PropertyType);
        }
    }
    return obj;
}