Calling a method on a static class given its type

Question

How could I go about calling a method on a static class given the class name and the method name, please?

For example:

Given System.Environment and GetFolderPath, I'd like to use Reflection to call Environment.GetFolderPath().

Answer 1

What you are doing here is reflecting on the type named Environment and using the GetPropery and GetGetMethod methods to get the get method of the Environment.CurrentDirectory property like so;

var getMethod = typeof(Environment).GetProperty("CurentDirectory", BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Static).GetGetMethod();
var currentDirectory = (string)getMethod.Invoke(null, null);

Calling the get method of a property returns it's value and is equivilent to;

var value = Environment.CurrentDirectory;

Answer 2

First you need to get the Type (by iterating on the assembly using reflection)

see this link for details: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.reflection.propertyinfo.aspx

or use

Assembly.GetType

once you have the type in hand you can iterate over members using reflection or

MethodInfo method = typeof(MyClass).GetMethod("MyMethod");

then you can use MethodInfo.Invoke and pass arguments to invoke the method when you want to invoke it.

Answer 3

System.Reflection.Assembly info = typeof(System.Environment).Assembly;

Type t = info.GetType("System.Environment");
MethodInfo m = t.GetMethod("GetFolderPath");

object result = m.Invoke(null, arguments);

Answer 4

Here is a basic outline of what you would do:

1. Scan all the objects in the current AppDomain - find the one that matches what you know the class name to be
2. Get the static method with the name you know on that object
3. Dynamically invoke it.

Edit: This will work if you do not know the namespace of the static class. Otherwise use Daniel Brückner's solution as its much simpler.

Answer 5

Just

Type.GetType(typeName).GetMethod(methodName).Invoke(null, arguments);

where typeName is the name of the type as a string, methodName is the name of the method as a string, and arguments is an array of objects containing the arguments to call the method with.