Question

Assuming I have only the class name of a generic as a string in the form of ‘MyCustomGenericCollection(of MyCustomObjectClass)’ and don’t know the assembly it comes from, what is the easiest way to create an instance of that object?

If it helps, I know that the class implements IMyCustomInterface and is from an assembly loaded into the current AppDomain.

Markus Olsson gave an excellent example here, but I don’t see how to apply it to generics.

Answer 1

Once you parse it up, use Type.GetType(string) to get a reference to the types involved, then use Type.MakeGenericType(Type[]) to construct the specific generic type you need. Then, use Type.GetConstructor(Type[]) to get a reference to a constructor for the specific generic type, and finally call ConstructorInfo.Invoke to get an instance of the object.

Type t1 = Type.GetType('MyCustomGenericCollection'); Type t2 = Type.GetType('MyCustomObjectClass'); Type t3 = t1.MakeGenericType(new Type[] { t2 }); ConstructorInfo ci = t3.GetConstructor(Type.EmptyTypes); object obj = ci.Invoke(null);