I am referencing a COM library in Visual Studio, so it has automatically created the corresponding Interop assembly for me. I would like to do a GetType()
on these com objects, but they always return System.__ComObject
. Querying them for an interface works though:
bool isOfType = someComeObject is ISomeComObject; //this works
But what I really want is this to return the actual type of the com object:
Type type = someComeObject.GetType(); //returns System.__ComObject :-(
Does anyone know how to do what I want to do?
Add reference to Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll
and then:
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Information.TypeName(someCOMObject)
MSDN reference here.
The accepted answer by Darin requires a dependency to Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll
. If you don't want to have that you can use this simple helper class:
public static class TypeInformation
{
public static string GetTypeName(object comObject)
{
var dispatch = comObject as IDispatch;
if (dispatch == null)
{
return null;
}
var pTypeInfo = dispatch.GetTypeInfo(0, 1033);
string pBstrName;
string pBstrDocString;
int pdwHelpContext;
string pBstrHelpFile;
pTypeInfo.GetDocumentation(
-1,
out pBstrName,
out pBstrDocString,
out pdwHelpContext,
out pBstrHelpFile);
string str = pBstrName;
if (str[0] == 95)
{
// remove leading '_'
str = str.Substring(1);
}
return str;
}
[ComImport]
[InterfaceType(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown)]
[Guid("00020400-0000-0000-C000-000000000046")]
private interface IDispatch
{
int GetTypeInfoCount();
[return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Interface)]
ITypeInfo GetTypeInfo(
[In, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int iTInfo,
[In, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int lcid);
void GetIDsOfNames(
[In] ref Guid riid,
[In, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPArray)] string[] rgszNames,
[In, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int cNames,
[In, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int lcid,
[Out, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPArray)] int[] rgDispId);
}
}
You've basically figured it out. GetType() on a COM object is going to give you System.__ComObject, and you have to try to cast it to something else to see what the object really is.
I stumbled upon this question a few days ago while I was looking for the full type name of a System.__ComObject
object. I ended up getting the type name using Darin's solution and then looping through all classes in all assemblies to test the match:
typeName = Microsoft.VisualBasic.Information.TypeName(someCOMObject);
foreach (System.Reflection.Assembly assembly in AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies())
{
foreach (Type type in assembly.GetTypes())
{
if ((someCOMObject as type)!=null)
fullTypeName = type.FullName;
}
}
Not the fastest and most elegant solution, but it worked.