Error message 'Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information.'

Question

I have developed an application using Entity Framework, SQL Server 2000, Visual Studio 2008 and Enterprise Library.

It works absolutely fine locally, but when I deploy the project to our test environment, I am getting the following error:

Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information

Stack trace: at System.Reflection.Module._GetTypesInternal(StackCrawlMark& stackMark)

at System.Reflection.Assembly.GetTypes()

at System.Data.Metadata.Edm.ObjectItemCollection.AssemblyCacheEntry.LoadTypesFromAssembly(LoadingContext context)

at System.Data.Metadata.Edm.ObjectItemCollection.AssemblyCacheEntry.InternalLoadAssemblyFromCache(LoadingContext context)

at System.Data.Metadata.Edm.ObjectItemCollection.AssemblyCacheEntry.LoadAssemblyFromCache(Assembly assembly, Boolean loadReferencedAssemblies, Dictionary2 knownAssemblies, Dictionary2& typesInLoading, List`1& errors)

at System.Data.Metadata.Edm.ObjectItemCollection.LoadAssemblyFromCache(ObjectItemCollection objectItemCollection, Assembly assembly, Boolean loadReferencedAssemblies)

at System.Data.Metadata.Edm.ObjectItemCollection.LoadAssemblyForType(Type type)

at System.Data.Metadata.Edm.MetadataWorkspace.LoadAssemblyForType(Type type, Assembly callingAssembly)

at System.Data.Objects.ObjectContext.CreateQuery[T](String queryString, ObjectParameter[] parameters)

Entity Framework seems to have issue, any clue how to fix it?

Answer 1

This error has no true magic bullet answer. The key is to have all the information to understand the problem. Most likely a dynamically loaded assembly is missing a referenced assembly. That assembly needs to be in the bin directory of your application.

Use this code to determine what is missing.

using System.IO;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Text;

try
{
    //The code that causes the error goes here.
}
catch (ReflectionTypeLoadException ex)
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    foreach (Exception exSub in ex.LoaderExceptions)
    {
        sb.AppendLine(exSub.Message);
        FileNotFoundException exFileNotFound = exSub as FileNotFoundException;
        if (exFileNotFound != null)
        {                
            if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(exFileNotFound.FusionLog))
            {
                sb.AppendLine("Fusion Log:");
                sb.AppendLine(exFileNotFound.FusionLog);
            }
        }
        sb.AppendLine();
    }
    string errorMessage = sb.ToString();
    //Display or log the error based on your application.
}

Answer 2

I solved this issue by setting the Copy Local attribute of my project's references to true.