Simple way to copy or clone a DataRow

Question

I m looking for a simple way to make a clone of a DataRow   Kind of like taking a snapshot of that Row and saving it   The values of original Row are then free to change but we still have another saved copy which doesn t change   Is this the correct way to do it   DataRow Source  Destination     Assume we create some columns and fill them with values Destination ItemArray   Source ItemArray    Will this just set Snapshot s ItemArray reference to point to the one in Source or does it actually make a separate copy   Should I do this instead   Destination ItemArray   Source ItemArray Clone      EDIT  I don t think the second code snippet actually compiles

User · Accepted Answer

You can use ImportRow method to copy Row from DataTable to DataTable with the same schema   var row   SourceTable Rows RowNum   DestinationTable ImportRow row     Update   With your new Edit  I believe   var desRow   dataTable NewRow    var sourceRow   dataTable Rows rowNum   desRow ItemArray   sourceRow ItemArray Clone   as object      will work

User · Answer

It seems you don t want to keep the whole DataTable as a copy  because you only need some rows  right  If you got a creteria you can specify with a select on the table  you could copy just those rows to an extra backup array of DataRow like  DataRow   rows   sourceTable Select  searchColumn   value      The  Select   function got several options and this one e g  can be read as a SQL   SELECT   FROM sourceTable WHERE searchColumn   value    Then you can import the rows you want as described above   targetTable ImportRows rows n        for any valid n you like  but the columns need to be the same in each table   Some things you should know about ImportRow is that there will be errors during runtime when using primary keys    First I wanted to check whether a row already existed which also failed due to a missing primary key  but then the check always failed  In the end I decided to clear the existing rows completely and import the rows I wanted again   The second issue did help to understand what happens  The way I m using the import function is to duplicate rows with an exchanged entry in one column  I realized that it always changed and it still was a reference to the row in the array  I first had to import the original and then change the entry I wanted   The reference also explains the primary key errors that appeared when I first tried to import the row as it really was doubled up

User · Answer

But to make sure that your new row is accessible in the new table  you need to close the table   DataTable destination   new DataTable source TableName   destination   source Clone    DataRow sourceRow   source Rows 0   destination ImportRow sourceRow

User · Answer

Note  cuongle s helfpul answer has all the ingredients  but the solution can be streamlined  no need for  ItemArray  and can be reframed to better match the question as asked   To create an  isolated  clone of a given System Data DataRow instance  you can do the following      Assume that variable  table  contains the source data table      Create an auxiliary  empty  column-structure-only clone of the source data table  var tableAux   table Clone       Note   Copy    by contrast  would clone the data rows also      Select the data row to clone  e g  the 2nd one  var row   table Rows 1       Import the data row of interest into the aux  table     This creates a  shallow clone  of it     Note  If you ll be  reusing  the aux  table for single-row cloning later  call          tableAux Clear   first  tableAux ImportRow row       Extract the cloned row from the aux  table  var rowClone   tableAux Rows 0     Note  Shallow cloning is performed  which works as-is with column values that are value type instances  but more work would be needed to also create independent copies of column values containing reference type instances  and creating such independent copies isn t always possible

[c#] Simple way to copy or clone a DataRow?

Examples related to c#

Examples related to datatable

Examples related to datarow