Assembly
In the .NET environment, assemblies are the fundamental units of development and deployment; although the various languages allow the .NET programmer to work with elements as fine-grained as classes or functions, these types must belong as part of an assembly in order to be loaded and used. Consequently, the assembly is the core of the component model in .NET. The Assembly type is the Reflection API object representing the assembly. An assembly (either a .DLL or .EXEto the CLR, there is no difference) consists of one or more modules; most assemblies are in fact single-module assemblies. (Multimodule assemblies are certainly possible, but usually not necessary for most developers' needs. As such, they are not discussed here.) .NET programmers can use the object model in the Assembly class to discover information about a particular assemblyfor example, an assembly knows the modules contained within it, and each module knows the types defined and bound to that module. Thus, for any random assembly, a .NET program can enumerate each type defined inside that assembly. This is, in fact, what the WinCV.exe sample program (see the .NET SDK, in the \bin subdirectory) does. (The ILDasm.exe application provides similar results, but uses unmanaged APIs to view into an assembly, rather than Reflection.) The Assembly API can be broken into two collections: those representing operations against a particular assembly (indicated by a particular Assembly instance), and those that work independently of a particular instanceloading an assembly into the CLR, for example. The instance-specific methods of Assembly are, for the most part, self-describing . The properties of Assembly , in particular, are straightforward. CodeBase describes the URL from which this assembly was loaded, EntryPoint describes the entry point (the Main( ) ) of the assembly, if it has one, Evidence is the security information regarding this particular assembly, and FullName is the fully qualified ( name , culture, version info , and public key token) for this assembly. The remaining two properties are a bit more obscure: GlobalAssemblyCache is a simple boolean value indicating whether this assembly was loaded out of the global assembly cache or not, and Location describes the location of the manifest file (which may be in a different file if this is a multimodule assembly). Note that as of the 1.1 .NET release, a new property, ImageRuntimeVersion , returns the version number of the CLR used to build the assembly; when used against a 1.0-compiled assembly, it may return illegal strings like "v1.x86ret" or "retail" instead of the 1.1-documented "v1.1.4322". Some instance methods of Assembly require a bit more in the way of explanation. GetName( ) returns the fully qualified name for this assembly; note that this is an AssemblyName instance, rather than a string. Because an Assembly is also a producer of custom attribute types (such as AssemblyVersionAttribute or AssemblyKeyFileAttribute ), Assembly also has the GetCustomAttributes( ) method. In addition, the IsDefined( ) method can be used to find a particular attribute type defined in this assembly; it simply returns a boolean true/false value, whereas GetCustomAttributes( ) returns the instance(s) of the attribute itself. A list (an array of AssemblyName instances) of all assemblies that this assembly references can be found by calling GetReferencedAssemblies( ) . In addition to code, assemblies can contain arbitrary "resources." (Here the term "resource" means "anything that's not code.") These resources are contained as .file references in the assembly's manifest file and can be discovered from an Assembly instance by calling GetManifestResourceNames( ) . Information about the persistence scheme used for the resources is available via the GetManifestResourceInfo( ) . The actual resource itself can be obtained by calling GetManifestResourceStream( ) , which returns a System.IO.Stream object containing or pointing to the file's contents. In addition, a list of all files (both resources and code) can be obtained by calling GetFiles( ) , and a particular file can be opened by calling GetFile( ) . An assembly consists of one or more modules; the list of modules bound to this assembly are available via the GetModules( ) call. A particular module can be obtained as a Module instance by calling GetModule( ) against the assembly. Because the CLR delays loading modules until required, Assembly also provides the GetLoadedModules( ) to list the modules of this assembly that have been loaded into the CLR. Going the other direction, the LoadModule( ) call forces the CLR to load the given module name into memory, rather than waiting for the usual on-demand loading policy of the CLR. Should a module-load fail for some reason, the CLR signals event handlers bound against the Assembly instance's ModuleResolve event. Frequently, a .NET programmer will not be interested in the modules that comprise the assembly, only the types defined within it. Towards that end, the Assembly type has a couple of "shortcut" methods to get the types. GetTypes( ) returns a list of all the types defined in this assembly as an array of System.Type references. GetType( ) returns a particular System.Type , or optionally (depending on which overload is used) throws an exception if the type cannot be found. Take note that the parameterless version of GetType( ) is the inherited method from System.Object ; it returns the System.Type reference for Assembly , not any types defined within the assembly itself. Note that the GetTypes( ) call returns a list of all types defined in the assembly, even those declared as private to the assembly (which normally should not be seen by assembly consumers); to see a list of only the "public" types, call GetExportedTypes( ) instead. Once a particular type within the assembly has been located, an instance of that type can be created by calling CreateInstance( ) . This uses the system activator (see System.Activator ) to create an instance of that type and hand it back as a generic object reference. For example, calling object o = typeof(Object).Assembly.CreateInstance("DateTime"); is a roundabout way to create an instance of a System.DateTime ; the typeof(Object) returns the System.Type for System.Object . That type lives in the mscorlib.dll assembly, and calling CreateInstance("DateTime") succeeds because DateTime is defined within that assembly. .NET programmers typically only use this method when building a container application (such as ASP.NET) that will be creating instances of objects not known at compile-time. The Assembly type also contains a number of static methods for use in referencing assemblies as a collective whole; for example, the GetAssembly( ) call returns the Assembly in which a particular Type is defined. (Knowing this, we could change the example in the last paragraph to read object o = Assembly.GetAssembly(typeof(object)).CreateInstance("DateTime"); , which is a bit clearer if a bit longer.) Likewise, the GetExecutingAssembly( ) returns the assembly in which the current code is executing, and GetCallingAssembly( ) returns the assembly whose code called the methods in this assembly. (These methods by themselves may seem less than useful, until the idea of walking the call-stack, as Code Access Security does, is considered .) However, the two most important static methods on the Assembly class by far are Load( ) and LoadFrom( ) . Both load an assembly into the CLR, but in drastically different ways. LoadFrom( ) is the simpler of the two, taking a filename and loading it as an assembly into the CLRno questions asked. Load( ) goes through the assembly-load algorithm and checks the private probe path and the Global Assembly Cache before giving up on finding the assembly. (Note that if an assembly-load request fails, the appropriate events on the containing AppDomain instance are signaled.) In addition, starting with the 1.1 release, these two are joined by a new method, LoadFile( ) , which will load an assembly specified by a file location passed as a string. public class Assembly : System.Security.IEvidenceFactory, ICustomAttributeProvider, System.Runtime.Serialization.ISerializable { // Public Instance Properties public virtual string CodeBase {get; } public virtual MethodInfo EntryPoint {get; } public virtual string EscapedCodeBase {get; } public virtual Evidence Evidence {get; } // implements System.Security.IEvidenceFactory public virtual string FullName {get; } public bool GlobalAssemblyCache {get; } public virtual string ImageRuntimeVersion {get; } public virtual string Location {get; } // Public Static Methods public static string CreateQualifiedName (string assemblyName , string typeName ); public static Assembly GetAssembly (Type type ); public static Assembly GetCallingAssembly ( ); public static Assembly GetEntryAssembly ( ); public static Assembly GetExecutingAssembly ( ); public static Assembly Load (AssemblyName assemblyRef ); public static Assembly Load (AssemblyName assemblyRef , System.Security.Policy.Evidence assemblySecurity ); public static Assembly Load (byte[ ] rawAssembly ); public static Assembly Load (byte[ ] rawAssembly , byte[ ] rawSymbolStore ); public static Assembly Load (byte[ ] rawAssembly , byte[ ] rawSymbolStore , System.Security.Policy.Evidence securityEvidence ); public static Assembly Load (string assemblyString ); public static Assembly Load (string assemblyString , System.Security.Policy.Evidence assemblySecurity ); public static Assembly LoadFile (string path ); public static Assembly LoadFile (string path , System.Security.Policy.Evidence securityEvidence ); public static Assembly LoadFrom (string assemblyFile ); public static Assembly LoadFrom (string assemblyFile , System.Security.Policy.Evidence securityEvidence ); public static Assembly LoadFrom (string assemblyFile , System.Security.Policy.Evidence securityEvidence , byte[ ] hashValue , System.Configuration.Assemblies.AssemblyHashAlgorithm hashAlgorithm ); public static Assembly LoadWithPartialName (string partialName ); public static Assembly LoadWithPartialName (string partialName , System.Security.Policy.Evidence securityEvidence ); // Public Instance Methods public object CreateInstance (string typeName ); public object CreateInstance (string typeName , bool ignoreCase ); public object CreateInstance (string typeName , bool ignoreCase , BindingFlags bindingAttr , Binder binder , object[ ] args , System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture , object[ ] activationAttributes ); public virtual object[ ] GetCustomAttributes (bool inherit ); // implements ICustomAttributeProvider public virtual object[ ] GetCustomAttributes (Type attributeType , bool inherit ) // implements ICustomAttributeProvider public virtual Type[ ] GetExportedTypes ( ); public virtual FileStream GetFile (string name ); public virtual FileStream[ ] GetFiles ( ); public virtual FileStream[ ] GetFiles (bool getResourceModules ); public Module[ ] GetLoadedModules ( ); public Module[ ] GetLoadedModules (bool getResourceModules ); public virtual ManifestResourceInfo GetManifestResourceInfo (string resourceName ); public virtual string[ ] GetManifestResourceNames ( ); public virtual Stream GetManifestResourceStream (string name ); public virtual Stream GetManifestResourceStream (Type type , string name ); public Module GetModule (string name ); public Module[ ] GetModules ( ); public Module[ ] GetModules (bool getResourceModules ); public virtual AssemblyName GetName ( ); public virtual AssemblyName GetName (bool copiedName ); public virtual void GetObjectData (System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationInfo info , System.Runtime.Serialization.StreamingContext context ) // implements ISerializable public AssemblyName[ ] GetReferencedAssemblies ( ); public Assembly GetSatelliteAssembly (System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture ); public Assembly GetSatelliteAssembly (System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture , Version version ); public virtual Type GetType (string name ); public virtual Type GetType (string name , bool throwOnError ); public Type GetType (string name , bool throwOnError , bool ignoreCase ); public virtual Type[ ] GetTypes ( ); public virtual bool IsDefined (Type attributeType , bool inherit ); // implements ICustomAttributeProvider public Module LoadModule (string moduleName , byte[ ] rawModule ); public Module LoadModule (string moduleName , byte[ ] rawModule , byte[ ] rawSymbolStore ); public override string ToString ( ); // overrides object // Events public event ModuleResolveEventHandler ModuleResolve ; } SubclassesSystem.Reflection.Emit.AssemblyBuilder Returned BySystem.AppDomain.{GetAssemblies( ) , Load( )} , System.AssemblyLoadEventArgs.LoadedAssembly , ManifestResourceInfo.ReferencedAssembly , Module.Assembly , System.ResolveEventHandler.{EndInvoke( ) , Invoke( )} , System.Type.Assembly Passed ToMultiple types  |
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