Create an instance of a class from a string

Question

Take a look at the Activator.CreateInstance method.

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);

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.

Probably my question should have been more specific. I actually know a base class for the string so solved it by:

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

The Activator.CreateInstance class has various methods to achieve the same thing in different ways. I could have cast it to an object but the above is of the most use to my situation.

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");