Can I Dynamically Instantiate a .NET Class from Just a DLL and Class Name?

Dynamic loading and instantiation of .NET assemblies

Having only a DLL and class name, is it possible to dynamically create an object without explicitly referencing an assembly in the project? This class conforms to the interface specification, allowing you to cast it to an interface after instantiation.

Assembly and type information

• Assembly name: library.dll
• Type name: Company.Project.Classname

Solution

Yes. Using Assembly.LoadFrom you can load an assembly into memory. You can then use Activator.CreateInstance to create an instance of the desired type. Using reflection you have to search for the type first:

Assembly assembly = Assembly.LoadFrom("MyNice.dll");

Type type = assembly.GetType("MyType");

object instanceOfMyType = Activator.CreateInstance(type);

Improvement plan

Once you have the assembly file name and type name, you can use Activator.CreateInstance(assemblyName, typeName) to instruct the .NET type resolution mechanism to determine the type. To handle the case where this attempt fails, you can wrap it in a try/catch block and then search the directory where the supplementary assembly may be stored. At this point, you'll use the method mentioned earlier.

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