Question

In C# I have the following object:

public class Item
{ }

public class Task<T>
{ }

public class TaskA<T> : Task<T>
{ }

public class TaskB<T> : Task<T>
{ }

I want to dynamically create TaskA or TaskB using C# reflection (Activator.CreateInstance). However I wouldn’t know the type before hand, so I need to dynamically create TaskA based on string like “namespace.TaskA” or “namespace.TaskAB”.

Answer 1

Check out this article and this simple example. Quick translation of same to your classes …

var d1 = typeof(Task<>);
Type[] typeArgs = { typeof(Item) };
var makeme = d1.MakeGenericType(typeArgs);
object o = Activator.CreateInstance(makeme);

Per your edit: For that case, you can do this …

var d1 = Type.GetType("GenericTest.TaskA`1"); // GenericTest was my namespace, add yours
Type[] typeArgs = { typeof(Item) };
var makeme = d1.MakeGenericType(typeArgs);
object o = Activator.CreateInstance(makeme);

To see where I came up with backtick1 for the name of the generic class, see this article.

Note: if your generic class accepts multiple types, you must include the commas when you omit the type names, for example:

Type type = typeof(IReadOnlyDictionary<,>);