Duplicating layer in memory using pyqgis?

I have a layer in QGIS, and I want to duplicate it through a plugin so I can use the copy of it as I want, without modifying the original.

Of course layer2 = layer1 will not work, because everything that happens to layer2 will also happen to layer1, as it is the same object behind all this.

The only way I found to do it is as such :

QgsVectorFileWriter.writeAsVectorFormat(layer1,r"C:\Users\ABC\AppData\Local\Temp\NewLayer.shp","utf-8",None,"ESRI Shapefile")
layer2 = QgsVectorLayer("C:\Users\ABC\AppData\Local\Temp\NewLayer.shp","New vector","ogr")

#do something with layer2

Is there a simple way to duplicate the layer in memory, without having to write a new file ?

Answer

The following code works for me from both the Python Console and plugin. It takes the features from the source input layer and copies the attributes to a memory layer (in this case, a polygon layer but you can change it to LineString or Point depending on layer type):

layer = QgsVectorLayer("path/to/layer", "polygon", "ogr")
feats = [feat for feat in layer.getFeatures()]

mem_layer = QgsVectorLayer("Polygon?crs=epsg:4326", "duplicated_layer", "memory")


mem_layer_data = mem_layer.dataProvider()
attr = layer.dataProvider().fields().toList()
mem_layer_data.addAttributes(attr)
mem_layer.updateFields()
mem_layer_data.addFeatures(feats)

QgsMapLayerRegistry.instance().addMapLayer(mem_layer)