Interactive Session on Reflection

In C Sharp
Classification: Restricted 2012-04-19

Reflection
Reflection is the Feature that enables you to obtain the information about a type. All .NET assemblies have metadata information stored about the types defined in modules. This metadata information can be accessed by mechanism called as Reflection. Reflection is the ability of a managed code to read its own metadata for the purpose of finding assemblies, modules and type information at runtime. In other words, reflection provides objects that encapsulate assemblies, modules and types. A program reflects on itself by extracting metadata from its assembly and using that metadata either to inform the user or to modify its own behavior. Reflection is similar to C++ RTTI (Runtime Type Information), but much broader in scope and capability

Classification: Restricted

2012-04-19

Reflection Name Space to be used System.reflection

When writing a C# code that uses reflection, the coder can use the type of operator to get the object's type or use the GetType() method to get the type of the current instance. Using reflection services, we are able to programmatically obtain the same metadata information displayed by ildasm.exe.

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Example of Reflection
Using GetType to obtain type information: C# Code : int i = 42; System.Type type = i.GetType(); System.Console.WriteLine(type); Output of this Code will be System.Int32

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When use Reflection

If we want to know assembly information at run time ,then we use reflection. Reflection are used for data binding in .NET Framework. It is also used for testing in .NET Framework.

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Example
In the below example reflection is used to obtain the full name of a loaded assembly: CODE System.Reflection.Assembly o = System.Reflection.Assembly.Load("mscorlib.dll"); System.Console.WriteLine(o.GetName());

Output of the above code

mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089

Classification: Restricted

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So Reflection allows you to

Enumerate the members of a type Instantiate a new object Execute the members of an object Find out information about a type Find out information about an assembly Inspect the custom attributes applied to a type Create and compile a new assembly

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System.Reflection Namespace

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The System.Type Class

The System.Type class defines a number of members that can be used to examine a types metadata, a great number of which return types from the System.Reflection namespace. Eg: Type.GetMethods() returns an array of MethodInfo types, Type.GetFields() returns an array of FieldInfo types.

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Members of System.Type
IsAbstract IsArray IsClass IsCOMObject IsEnum IsInterface IsPrimitive IsNestedPrivate IsNestedPublic IsSealed IsValueType These properties allow you to discover a number of basic traits about the Type you are referring to (e.g., if it is an abstract method, an array, a nested class, and so forth).

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Methods
GetConstructors() GetEvents() GetFields() GetInterfaces() GetMembers() GetMethods(). GetNestedTypes() GetProperties() These methods allow you to obtain an array representing the items (interface, method, property, etc.) you are interested in. Each method returns a related array (e.g., GetFields() returns a FieldInfo array, GetMethods() returns a MethodInfo array, etc.). Each of these methods has a singular form (e.g., GetMethod(), GetProperty(), etc.) that allows you to retrieve a specific item by name, rather than an array of all related items.

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Methods
GetType() To obtain type information, you may call the static GetType() member of the System.Type class and specify the fully qualified string name of the type to examine. Compile-time knowledge of the type to be extracted from metadata is not required.

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GET TYPE METHOD

The Type.GetType() method has overloads to allow you to specify two Boolean parameters, one of which controls whether an exception should be thrown if the type cannot be found, and the other of which establishes the case sensitivity of the string.

Obtaining type information using the static Type.GetType() method:

Type t = Type.GetType("CarLibrary.SportsCar", false, true);

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Reflecting on Methods
Type.GetMethods() returns an array of System.Reflection.MethodInfo types. // Display method names of type. public static void ListMethods(Type t) { Console.WriteLine("Methods"); MethodInfo[] mi = t.GetMethods(); foreach(MethodInfo m in mi) Console.WriteLine("->{0}", m.Name); Console.WriteLine(""); }

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Reflecting on Fields
Type.GetFields() returns an array of System.Reflection.FieldInfo types.
// Display field names of type public static void ListFields(Type t) { Console.WriteLine("Fields"); FieldInfo[] fi = t.GetFields();

foreach(FieldInfo field in fi)

Console.WriteLine("->{0}", field.Name); Console.WriteLine(""); }

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Reflecting on Properties
Type. GetProperties() returns an array of System.Reflection. PropertyInfo types. // Display property names of type. public static void ListProps(Type t) { Console.WriteLine("***** Properties *****"); PropertyInfo[] pi = t.GetProperties(); foreach(PropertyInfo prop in pi) Console.WriteLine("->{0}", prop.Name); Console.WriteLine(""); }

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Dynamically Loading Assemblies

The act of loading external assemblies on demand is known as a dynamic load. System.Reflection defines a class Assembly. Which enables to dynamically load an assembly and discover properties about the assembly. Assembly type enables to dynamically load private or shared assemblies, as well as load an assembly located at an arbitrary location.

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Late Binding
Late binding is a technique in which you are able to create an instance of a given type and invoke its members at runtime without having compile-time knowledge of its existence. It increases applications Extensibility.

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Reflection in C # Harman Aplication Developer

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