Automatically run code on referenced assembly during startup?? What is this called?

Question

In .NET, there is something that can automatically run a piece of code in a referenced assembly when the assembly is loaded.

For example, you can have a class decorated with a sort of attribute that lives in project Foo(A Class Library). And project Bar(A Web App) simply references project Foo. When Bar loads, that decorated code in Foo gets run somehow. I believe this is a newer feature.

Can someone tell what this feature is called??

Update: Thanks Shiva! Not Module Initialize. Although it lead me to the right answer. PreApplicationStartMethod and it's supported in .NET! Thanks all!!

Answer 1

Turns out I was looking for PreApplicationStartMethod! Thanks all!

Answer 2

You might have also have a look at Fody. Fody is "an Extensible tool for weaving .net assemblies" which you can install as a nuget package. There is an add-in for fody called Module Initializers. Which under the hood uses the, in other answers already mentioned module initializers, but takes away the plumping.

From the documentation:

What it does: Finds a class, in the target assembly, named ModuleInitializer with the following form:

public static class ModuleInitializer
{
    public static void Initialize()
    {
        //Init code
    }
}

It then Injects the following code into the module initializer of the target assembly. This code will be called when the assembly is loaded into memory

static <Module>()
{
    ModuleInitializer.Initialize();
}