Question

Here is situation:
I have two projects. ConsoleApp and Class Library. Console app references class library.
There is Person class in Class library.

Following code returns null in type variable:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
   Type type = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies()
.Select(a => a.GetType("LoadTest.Person", false)).Where(t => t != null).FirstOrDefault();
}

However if I add direct declaration, code is working well.

static void Main(string[] args)
{
   Person p = null;
   Type type = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies()
.Select(a => a.GetType("LoadTest.Person", false)).Where(t => t != null).FirstOrDefault();
}

It is known problem. However is it any solution without declaration any assembly member?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can simply:

  var personType = typeof(Person)

that will load the assembly and give you the type you want, but if you want to use the Assembly class for some reason, do this:

  var type = Assembly.GetAssembly(typeof(Person)).GetType("LoadTest.Person");

or, if you do not know the type at runtime nor the dll filename but you can be sure that the dll is in the working directory you can do this:

  var type = new DirectoryInfo(Environment.CurrentDirectory).GetFiles("*.dll").Select(f => Assembly.LoadFile(f.FullName)).Select(assembly => assembly.GetType("LoadTest.Person")).FirstOrDefault();