Question

I use the following code:

Assembly.LoadFile("the assembly in another folder");
var type = Type.GetType("the full name of the type");

Even though the assembly was already loaded before this line of code, it always returns null in type.

PS: I did pass in the assembly qualified name, including namespace, type name, assembly name, version and public token.

Answer 1

Type.GetType only searches the types in the calling assembly and the types in mscorlib.dll unless you pass the assembly qualified name of the type. See here.

EDIT

It appears that Type.GetType is only able to retrieve Type instances from assemblies in the Load context. Assemblies loaded using LoadFile are in no context and those loaded using LoadFrom are in the Load From context; neither of these contexts allow you to use Type.GetType so the resolution will fail. This article shows that Type information can be retrieved for an Assembly when the directory it is in is added as a probing privatePath since it will then end up in the Load context but will fail in other contexts.