Understanding the .NET Compact Framework Reflection API

The .NET Compact Framework Reflection API provides access to the metadata in a .NET assembly. .NET assemblies contain modules, modules contain types, and types contain members, such as methods , fields, properties, and events. The Reflection API provides objects that encapsulate and provide access to the metadata located within assemblies, modules, types, and members . The Reflection API is commonly used to dynamically create an instance of a type or get the type from an existing object. After you have that type, you can invoke methods and constructors or access fields and properties.

The desktop .NET Framework provides the ability to dynamically generate new code by using the System.Reflection.Emit namespace. This is not supported by the .NET Compact Framework.