How do I instantiate a class given its string name?

Question

I have an abstract class and I want to initalize it to a class that extends it.

I have the child classes name as a string.

Besides this...

String childClassString; MyAbstractClass myObject;  if (childClassString = "myExtenedObjectA")     myObject = new ExtenedObjectA(); if (childClassString = "myExtenedObjectB")     myObject = new ExtenedObjectB(); 

How can I do this? Basically how do I get rid of the if statements here?

Answer 1

Look at Activator.CreateInstance().

myObject = (MyAbstractClass)Activator.CreateInstance("AssemblyName", "TypeName"); 

or

var type = Type.GetType("MyFullyQualifiedTypeName"); var myObject = (MyAbstractClass)Activator.CreateInstance(type); 

Answer 2

I believe this should work:

myObject = (MyAbstractClass)Activator.CreateInstance(null, childClassString); 

The null in the first parameter defaults to the current executing assembly. For more reference: MSDN

edit: forgot to cast to MyAbstractClass