Cast a model class to another class with different object names

Question

I have an app which uses a dataset. eg.

public class mainData
{
        public string itemID { get; set; }
        public string firstName { get; set; }
        public string lastName { get; set; }
        public string address { get; set; }
}

I have 4 other data sets which are imported API data from other apps which have the 'same' data (eg same type of fiends) but use different names. eg,

public class importedData1
{
        public string itemsID { get; set; }
        public string fName { get; set; }
        public string lName { get; set; }
        public string add { get; set; }
}

Each of the 4 sets is different.

What I'm doing at the moment is:

• Importing data from the API of the new data (eg. importedData1)/

• Created a function to convert that data into the mainData class model by doing a foreach loop on each of the records in the imported data.

    public static mainData ConvertData1(importedData1 item)
    {
       mainData sxData = new mainData ()
       {
         itemID = item.itemsID,
         firstName = item.fname,
         lastName = item.lname,
         address = item.add};
  
  
         return sxData;
         }
  

(apologies, the indentation is having issues in stack) I then have 4 of these functions, 1 for each of the imported data sets.

Is this an 'ok' way to achieve this?
if it was just a single set of data to another I was going to use {get;set} within the main Model however with all 4 I thought this would start getting very mixed up as there are some crossovers in naming convention but with different object types!

Answer 1

One of the best approaches is to use AutoMapper. It is an open-source project and you can effortlessly search, download and use it.

Now assume you have the following classes and want to map between:

public class mainData
{
    public string itemID { get; set; }
    public string firstName { get; set; }
    public string lastName { get; set; }
    public string address { get; set; }
}

public class importedData1
{
    public string itemsID { get; set; }
    public string fName { get; set; }
    public string lName { get; set; }
    public string add { get; set; }
}

Now, because your classes use different property names, we need to use the fluent builder of AutoMapper to map your fields. it's a little tricky but a life saver:

var config = new MapperConfiguration(cfg =>
    cfg.CreateMap<importedData1, mainData>()
        .ForMember(x => x.itemID, y => y.MapFrom(x => x.itemsID))
        .ForMember(x => x.firstName, y => y.MapFrom(x => x.fName))
        .ForMember(x => x.lastName, y => y.MapFrom(x => x.lName))
        .ForMember(x => x.address, y => y.MapFrom(x => x.add))
        .ReverseMap()
);

Now you can easily map your two classes as like as following example:

var mapper = new Mapper(config);
var recDto = mapper.Map<mainData>(impDto);

Console.WriteLine($"{recDto.firstName} {recDto.lastName}");
Console.WriteLine(recDto.GetType().Name); // Its maindata

Output: