Question

I am new to reflection and am hitting a brick wall trying to understand types.

What exactly does Assembly mean and what does Assembly.GetTypes() return? Also if you call something like GetGenericArguments() on a ‘type’ you get from the GetTypes() command, what does that do exactly?

Thanks

Answer 1

Calling Assembly.GetTypes() returns all the types and interfaces that are defined in the assembly.

Calling Type.GetGenericArguments() returns all the generic parameters specified for a generic type. This might not be the clearest explanation, an example would help:

var type1 = typeof(Func<>);
type1.GetGenericArguments(); // [ typeof(TResult) ]

var type2 = typeof(Func<string>);
type2.GetGenericArguments(); // [ typeof(String) ]

var type3 = typeof(Tuple<string, int, bool>);
type3.GetGenericArguments(); // [ typeof(String), typeof(Int32), typeof(Boolean) ]