Load components from DLL(Assembly) without loading the assembly

Question

How to load a component from an Assembly without loading the complete Assembly in the memory?

Say if I have a UserControl UC1 in an Assembly, I want to load it either in XAML or c# code without loading the whole assembly file? Can I do it?

You can use Reflection to execute .NET code without linking in compile time. (BTW this is exact way the PowerShell works). — Pavel Pája Halbich, Dec 29 '15 at 08:16

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 29 '15 at 08:20

1

For code inspection only, you need to read this article on MSDN. With that approach, inspected library is not loaded. Unfortunatelly, to execute method, you need to load assembly and methods from assembly as other posts are sugesting.

answered Dec 29 '15 at 08:20

Pavel Pája Halbich

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I've updated the question, can you check now – Kylo Ren Apr 26 '16 at 08:42

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:23

0

From other stack overflow post: Loading DLLs at runtime in C#

Members must be resolvable at compile time to be called directly from C#. Otherwise you must use reflection or dynamic objects.

namespace ConsoleApplication1 {
    using System;
    using System.Reflection;

    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var DLL = Assembly.LoadFile(@"C:\visual studio 2012\Projects\ConsoleApplication1\ConsoleApplication1\DLL.dll");

            foreach(Type type in DLL.GetExportedTypes())
            {
                var c = Activator.CreateInstance(type);
                type.InvokeMember("Output", BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, c, new object[] {@"Hello"});
            }

            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }

}

edited May 23 '17 at 12:23

Community

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answered Dec 29 '15 at 08:12

Dovydas Šopa

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this will load aseambly... question was if it can be done WITHOUT loading – Pavel Pája Halbich Dec 29 '15 at 08:15
True, missed 'without' part while reading.. – Dovydas Šopa Dec 29 '15 at 08:20
@DovydasSopa I've updated the question, can you check? – Kylo Ren Apr 26 '16 at 08:42

Load components from DLL(Assembly) without loading the assembly

2 Answers2