Question

Can someone explain Activator.CreateInstance() purpose in detail?

Answer 1

Say you have a class called MyFancyObject like this one below:

class MyFancyObject
{
 public int A { get;set;}
}

It lets you turn:

String ClassName = "MyFancyObject";

Into

MyFancyObject obj;

Using

obj = (MyFancyObject)Activator.CreateInstance("MyAssembly", ClassName))

and can then do stuff like:

obj.A = 100;

That’s its purpose. It also has many other overloads such as providing a Type instead of the class name in a string. Why you would have a problem like that is a different story. Here’s some people who needed it:

• Createinstance() – Am I doing this right?
• C# Using Activator.CreateInstance
• Creating an object without knowing the class name at design time