Get the name of a class as a string in C#

Question

Is there a way to take a class name and convert it to a string in C#?

As part of the Entity Framework, the .Include method takes in a dot-delimited list of strings to join on when performing a query. I have the class model of what I want to join, and for reasons of refactoring and future code maintenance, I want to be able to have compile-time safety when referencing this class.

Thus, is there a way that I could do this:

class Foo { }  tblBar.Include ( Foo.GetType().ToString() ); 

I don't think I can do GetType() without an instance. Any ideas?

Answer 1

You can't use .GetType() without an instance because GetType is a method.

You can get the name from the type though like this:

typeof(Foo).Name 

And as pointed out by Chris, if you need the assembly qualified name you can use

typeof(Foo).AssemblyQualifiedName