23.0 Introduction

This chapter looks at a powerful feature within the .NET Framework known as reflection . Reflection is the ability to programmatically view the contents of an assembly by inspecting its individual modules. The modules in turn contain several different types, which themselves contains several members . This hierarchical structure is implemented within .NET as a series of collections contained within the classes in the System.Reflection namespace.

Reflection is a concept that is easy to grasp but difficult to interject into an application design unless you have intimate knowledge of the problem domains that reflection is best suited for. The applicability of reflection within a certain application is called out throughout this chapter as you look into areas such as dynamic code generation, dynamic invocation, and plug-in architectures.