Question

I have the full path to a dll, but not a reference, where I need to instantiate an object that implements an interface that I’ve defined.
I do have control over the other dll, so I am able to do things like stick a static function in the dll that returns the object I need. I’m just not sure how to call that function, or even if I’m approaching this right.

Answer 1

You’ll need to manually load the assembly, then use reflection to find and execute the method you’re interested in. Here’s an article.

The interesting calls/statements in that article are:

• Calling Assembly.Load() to have the runtime load the assembly into the AppDomain (making it’s members callable).

• Searching the Types contained in the assembly

• Building MethodInfo and ConstructorInfo objects, which are the reflection components used to call a method or instantiate an instance, respectively

• Calling .Invoke() on the MethodInfo or ConstructorInfo. Invoke() is essentially telling Reflection to execute the corresponding method.