Problem in calling a dll dynamically

Question

Is it possible to link any dll file with a c# program without knowing any details about it and to get details of the data and functions of it.I tried with explicit linking but i could not.If any one could please...

Thanks in advance

Alan · Answer

Reflection is a huge subject but the following program shows how to display all the types in a dll (using System.Drawing.dll as an example) and then to list all the members in each type, 20 at a time if there are more than 20. To use your own dll instead, you need to know its version, culture and publickeytoken as well as its simple name (without the .dll extension). If you haven't done anything special, then typically these will be: Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null. using System; using System.Reflection; class Program { static void Main() { Console.Clear(); string dllName = "system.drawing, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"; Console.WriteLine("Examining assembly {0} ...
", dllName); Assembly assembly = Assembly.Load(dllName); Type[] types = assembly.GetTypes(); Console.WriteLine("{0} type(s) found ...
", types.Length); for(int i = 0; i { Type t = types[i]; MemberInfo[] mia = t.GetMembers(); Console.WriteLine("{0}, {1}, has {2} member(s), namely :
", GetTypeKind(t), t, mia.Length); for(int j = 0; j { Console.WriteLine("{0} is {1}", mia[j].Name, mia[j].MemberType); if ((j + 1) % 20 == 0) { Console.WriteLine("
Continue listing y/n ? 
"); char reply = Console.ReadKey(true).KeyChar; if (reply == 'n' || reply == 'N') break; } } if (i { Console.WriteLine("
Look at another y/n ? 
"); char reply = Console.ReadKey(true).KeyChar; if (reply == 'n' || reply == 'N') break; } } } static string GetTypeKind(Type t) { if (t.IsClass) return "Class"; else if (t.IsInterface) return "Interface"; else if (t.IsEnum) return "Enum"; else return "Struct"; } }

kandy · Answer

can you explain me how to call the managed dll through reflection?

Alan · Answer

No, you can only link managed dlls and then find out what they contain using reflection. If you're wanting to examine unmanaged dlls, I'd use a tool such as dependency walker (depends.exe) which comes with VS or can be downloaded free from this site: http://www.dependencywalker.com/

Problem in calling a dll dynamically

Answers (3)