.net – Best Practices For Mapping DTO to Domain Object

I usually go with something like the implementation given in Josh Bloch's fabulous Effective Java. It's fast and creates a pretty good hash which is unlikely to cause collisions. Pick two different prime numbers, e.g. 17 and 23, and do:

public override int GetHashCode()
{
    unchecked // Overflow is fine, just wrap
    {
        int hash = 17;
        // Suitable nullity checks etc, of course :)
        hash = hash * 23 + field1.GetHashCode();
        hash = hash * 23 + field2.GetHashCode();
        hash = hash * 23 + field3.GetHashCode();
        return hash;
    }
}

As noted in comments, you may find it's better to pick a large prime to multiply by instead. Apparently 486187739 is good... and although most examples I've seen with small numbers tend to use primes, there are at least similar algorithms where non-prime numbers are often used. In the not-quite-FNV example later, for example, I've used numbers which apparently work well - but the initial value isn't a prime. (The multiplication constant is prime though. I don't know quite how important that is.)

This is better than the common practice of XORing hashcodes for two main reasons. Suppose we have a type with two int fields:

XorHash(x, x) == XorHash(y, y) == 0 for all x, y
XorHash(x, y) == XorHash(y, x) for all x, y

By the way, the earlier algorithm is the one currently used by the C# compiler for anonymous types.

This page gives quite a few options. I think for most cases the above is "good enough" and it's incredibly easy to remember and get right. The FNV alternative is similarly simple, but uses different constants and XOR instead of ADD as a combining operation. It looks something like the code below, but the normal FNV algorithm operates on individual bytes, so this would require modifying to perform one iteration per byte, instead of per 32-bit hash value. FNV is also designed for variable lengths of data, whereas the way we're using it here is always for the same number of field values. Comments on this answer suggest that the code here doesn't actually work as well (in the sample case tested) as the addition approach above.

// Note: Not quite FNV!
public override int GetHashCode()
{
    unchecked // Overflow is fine, just wrap
    {
        int hash = (int) 2166136261;
        // Suitable nullity checks etc, of course :)
        hash = (hash * 16777619) ^ field1.GetHashCode();
        hash = (hash * 16777619) ^ field2.GetHashCode();
        hash = (hash * 16777619) ^ field3.GetHashCode();
        return hash;
    }
}

Note that one thing to be aware of is that ideally you should prevent your equality-sensitive (and thus hashcode-sensitive) state from changing after adding it to a collection that depends on the hash code.

As per the documentation:

You can override GetHashCode for immutable reference types. In general, for mutable reference types, you should override GetHashCode only if:

• You can compute the hash code from fields that are not mutable; or
• You can ensure that the hash code of a mutable object does not change while the object is contained in a collection that relies on its hash code.

The link to the FNV article is broken but here is a copy in the Internet Archive: Eternally Confuzzled - The Art of Hashing

A POCO follows the rules of OOP. It should (but doesn't have to) have state and behavior. POCO comes from POJO, coined by Martin Fowler [anecdote here]. He used the term POJO as a way to make it more sexy to reject the framework heavy EJB implementations. POCO should be used in the same context in .Net. Don't let frameworks dictate your object's design.

A DTO's only purpose is to transfer state, and should have no behavior. See Martin Fowler's explanation of a DTO for an example of the use of this pattern.

Here's the difference: POCO describes an approach to programming (good old fashioned object oriented programming), where DTO is a pattern that is used to "transfer data" using objects.

While you can treat POCOs like DTOs, you run the risk of creating an anemic domain model if you do so. Additionally, there's a mismatch in structure, since DTOs should be designed to transfer data, not to represent the true structure of the business domain. The result of this is that DTOs tend to be more flat than your actual domain.

In a domain of any reasonable complexity, you're almost always better off creating separate domain POCOs and translating them to DTOs. DDD (domain driven design) defines the anti-corruption layer (another link here, but best thing to do is buy the book), which is a good structure that makes the segregation clear.