Question

How can I get the type (it’s name as a string) of:

1) an unassigned member?

2) the current class (I mean the one in scope) when no instance is available and without using a shared method?

EDIT: Come to think of I, I’m starting to think 1) is impossible.

EDIT: 2) may in fact never occur as such. Actually I meant the parent class of a nested class when no instance of the parent class is available (but an unassigned variable is) and without using a shared method of the parent class

Answer 1

If you don’t have an instance then within a method you can call System.Reflection.MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod().DeclaringType

EDIT

Okay, based on your edits it looks like you’ve got this:

Public Class ParentClass
    Public Class NestedClass

    End Class
End Class

I think this method will do what you want. Usually “null is null” and doesn’t have a type. But the method below cheats (kind of) by forcing the compiler to infer the type through generics.

Public Shared Function GetParentClass(Of T)(ByVal obj As T) As String
    ''//Get the type passed in
    Dim ThisType = GetType(T)

    ''//Get the outer type
    Dim BaseType = ThisType.DeclaringType

    ''//Return the parent name
    Return BaseType.Name
End Function

Then you can call this like:

    Dim X As ParentClass.NestedClass = Nothing
    Dim PCName = GetParentClass(X)
    Console.WriteLine(PCName)