Create an instance of a class from a string

Question

Is there a way to create an instance of a class based on the fact I know the name of the class at runtime. Basically I would have the name of the class in a string.

Answer 1

To create an instance of a class from another project in the solution, you can get the assembly indicated by the name of any class (for example BaseEntity) and create a new instance:

  var newClass = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetAssembly(typeof(BaseEntity)).CreateInstance("MyProject.Entities.User");

Answer 2

ReportClass report = (ReportClass)Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(reportClass));

why do u want to write a code like this? If you have a class 'ReportClass' is available, you can instantiate it directly as shown below.

ReportClass report = new ReportClass();

The code ReportClass report = (ReportClass)Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(reportClass)); is used when you dont have the necessary class available, but you want to instantiate and or or invoke a method dynamically.

I mean it is useful when u know the assembly but while writing the code you dont have the class ReportClass available.

Answer 3

I've used this method successfully:

System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CreateInstance(string className)

You'll need to cast the returned object to your desired object type.

Answer 4

Its pretty simple. Assume that your classname is Car and the namespace is Vehicles, then pass the parameter as Vehicles.Car which returns object of type Car. Like this you can create any instance of any class dynamically.

public object GetInstance(string strFullyQualifiedName)
{         
     Type t = Type.GetType(strFullyQualifiedName); 
     return  Activator.CreateInstance(t);         
}

If your Fully Qualified Name(ie, Vehicles.Car in this case) is in another assembly, the Type.GetType will be null. In such cases, you have loop through all assemblies and find the Type. For that you can use the below code

public object GetInstance(string strFullyQualifiedName)
{
     Type type = Type.GetType(strFullyQualifiedName);
     if (type != null)
         return Activator.CreateInstance(type);
     foreach (var asm in AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies())
     {
         type = asm.GetType(strFullyQualifiedName);
         if (type != null)
             return Activator.CreateInstance(type);
     }
     return null;
 }

Now if you want to call a parameterized constructor do the following

Activator.CreateInstance(t,17); // Incase you are calling a constructor of int type

instead of

Activator.CreateInstance(t);

Answer 5

You seem to have described the solution you want to implement, but not the problem you're trying to solve.

Perhaps you are trying to do something with extensibility, in which case I suggest you check out the Managed Extensibility Framework.

Answer 6

For instance, if you store values of various types in a database field (stored as string) and have another field with the type name (i.e., String, bool, int, MyClass), then from that field data, you could, conceivably, create a class of any type using the above code, and populate it with the value from the first field. This of course depends on the type you are storing having a method to parse strings into the correct type. I've used this many times to store user preference settings in a database.