Loading an assembly by Bytes loses the location

Question

I want to load the assembly via the following

var loadedAssembly = Assembly.Load(File.ContentsAsBytes);

the File.ContentAsBytes returns the dll as a byte[], via the following

System.IO.File.ReadAllBytes("dll location");

The issue is the loaded assembly (loadedAssembly) loses its phyisical location

• loadedAssembly.CodeBase - is set to the assembly which is loading it (which is not correct)
• loadedAssembly.Location - is empty

Is there a way to load from a byte[] and getting a similar result to Assembly.LoadFile as I need the the result to work with the AppDomain.CurrentDomain.AssemblyResolve

Answer 1

A byte array byte[] is simply a stream of bytes in memory. It has no correlation to any file at all. That byte array could have been read from file, downloaded from a web server, or created spontaneously by a random number generator. There is no extra data that "goes with it".

If you want to maintain the file location where the byte array was originally read from, then you must maintain that data separately in another variable. There is no way to "attach" the extra data to the byte[] variable.

When you use Assembly.Load to load the byte array as an assembly, it has no way to know where that byte array came from, because that extra data is not provided to the Load function.

As a workaround, is there a way you can save your byte array to a temporary file, use Assembly.LoadFile to give you the data you need and link the Location back to your original byte array?