Change property of immutable type

Question

I have stored immutable types in a temporary CQRS read store (query/read side, in fact implemented by a simple List with abstraction access layer, I don't want to use a full blown document database at this point). These read stores contains items like the following:

public class SomeItem
{
    private readonly string name;
    private readonly string description;

    public SomeItem(string name, string description)
    {
        this.name = name;
        this.description = description;
    }

    public string Name
    {
        get { return this.name; }
    }

    public string Description
    {
        get { return this.description; }
    }
}

Now I want to change the Name and in a 2nd Command the Description. These changes should keep the current state, which means for the example above:

// initial state
var someItem = new SomeItem("name", "description");

// update name -> newName
someItem = new SomeItem("newName", someItem.Description);

// update description -> newDescription
someItem = new SomeItem(someItem.Name, "newDescription");

This does look error prone to me if you have several properties... you have to manage keeping the current state. I could add something like Clone() to every type but I think/hope there is something better out there that performs well and is easy to use, I don't want to write much repetive code (lazy programmer). Any suggestions how to improve the code above? The SomeItem class needs to stay immutable (transported through several different threads).

Answer 1

With C#9 we got the with operator for this purpose.

   public record Car
    {
        public string Brand { get; init; }   
        public string Color { get; init; }    
    }
    var car = new Car{ Brand = "BMW", Color = "Red" }; 
    var anotherCar = car with { Brand = "Tesla"};

With-expressions When working with immutable data, a common pattern is to create new values from existing ones to represent a new state. For instance, if our person were to change their last name we would represent it as a new object that’s a copy of the old one, except with a different last name. This technique is often referred to as non-destructive mutation. Instead of representing the person over time, the record represents the person’s state at a given time. To help with this style of programming, records allow for a new kind of expression; the with-expression:

News in C#9

NOTE With operator is only supported by records.

Records At the core of classic object-oriented programming is the idea that an object has strong identity and encapsulates mutable state that evolves over time. C# has always worked great for that, But sometimes you want pretty much the exact opposite, and here C#’s defaults have tended to get in the way, making things very laborious.

Recods in C#9

Answer 2

Sadly, there's no simple way in C#. F# has the with keyword, and you could have a look at lenses, but it's all somewhat tedious in C#. The best I can give you is something like this:

class SomeItem
{
  private readonly string name;
  private readonly string description;

  public SomeItem(string name, string description)
  {
    this.name = name;
    this.description = description;
  }

  public SomeItem With
    (
      Option<string> name = null,
      Option<string> description = null
    )
  {
    return new SomeItem
      (
        name.GetValueOrDefault(this.name), 
        description.GetValueOrDefault(this.description)
      );
  }
}

This allows you to do the updates like

var newItem = oldItem.With(name: "My name!");

I've used this approach with extension methods and T4s to great effect, but even when you write the code manually, it's reasonably reliable - if you add a new field, you must add it to the With as well, so it works quite well.

There's a few more approaches if you are willing to tolerate runtime code generation and reducing type safety, but that's kind of going against the grain IMO.