How to get Namespace of an Assembly?

Question

Consider i have an assembly(class library dll) which i have loaded using the following code,

Assembly a = Assembly.LoadFrom(@"C:\Documents and Settings\E454935\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\nunit_dll_hutt\for_hutt_proj\bin\Debug\asdf.dll");

and i need to get the type of the Assembly. In order to get the type i need the namespace of the assembly.

Type t = asm.GetType("NAMESPACE.CLASSNAME",false,true);

how can i get the Namespace in the above line.?! as inorder to get the Namespace, i need to get the type..?

Type.Namespace;

i.e i need to get the Namespace of the assembly which can be used to get its Type.

Thanks in advance

score 38 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 18 '22 at 16:25

38

Use

Assembly.GetTypes();

This will get you a collection of all types and then you can get the Namespace property for each of them.

Then I guess you can simply check that all the types have same Namespace value and use this value. Otherwise add some other logic to detect what namespace to consider primary.

edited Feb 18 '22 at 16:25

shA.t

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answered Mar 17 '09 at 06:04

sharptooth

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eglasius · Answer 2 · 2009-03-17T06:10:14.480

25

An assembly can contain multiple namespaces. I think what you really want to ask is how to get a type from an assembly without specifying the namespace.

I don't know if there is a better way, but you can try looking for the specific type like this (add - using linq;):

myassembly.GetTypes().SingleOrDefault(t => t.Name == "ClassName")

This will effectively throw if there is more than 1 class with that name under different namespaces (because the Single method ensures there is only 1).

For a list of the namespaces for that class you can:

Assembly.Load("ClassName").GetTypes().Select(t => t.Namespace).Distinct();

edited Mar 17 '09 at 06:10

answered Mar 17 '09 at 06:04

eglasius

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In addition, an assembly can contain multiple types even within the same namespace. The OP needs to understand this concept. – Cerebrus Mar 17 '09 at 06:18
Thanks, this answer is better. – Najeeb Nov 18 '18 at 16:56

Ramin Bateni · Answer 3 · 2017-01-24T15:33:08.733

23

Updated:

IF the assembly name & assembly namespace are same in your project and you sure keep theme same AND you want get the namespace of the current executed Assembly then you can use this:

var namespace = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().Name;

And for your loaded assembly:

var namespace = myAssembly.GetName().Name;

But IF the assembly name & assembly namespace are not same in your project then you can use this way:

// Like @eglasius answer >>
// Find all namespaces in the target assembly where a class with the following name is exists:
var namespaceList=Assembly.Load("MyClassName").GetTypes().Select(t => t.Namespace).Distinct();

edited Jan 24 '17 at 15:33

answered May 06 '15 at 13:14

Ramin Bateni

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The assembly name is not the same thing as the assembly's namespace, or the namespace of any particular type within that assembly. So unfortunately, this answer is incorrect. – ErikE Nov 20 '15 at 01:03
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@ErikE, Thank u for your hint. I know the question has been answered, my answer was a secondary way for this case: By default they are equal and in some cases developers keep them same, so In this cases my answer is correct. I updated my answer with an additional IF. – Ramin Bateni Nov 21 '15 at 06:28

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 20 '15 at 13:42

1

Assembly.GetName().Name will get you the default namespace

edited Apr 20 '15 at 13:42

Irvin Dominin

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answered Oct 29 '14 at 16:29

Lance H

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Isn't that user-defined metadata? It could be anything then. – Ray Nov 22 '14 at 16:57
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No, this is the name of the file. It doesn't have to have anything to do with the namespace. – Mark A. Donohoe Apr 16 '15 at 20:10
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this is the name of the file. It doesn't have to have anything to do with the namespace – Gianpiero Apr 29 '18 at 07:20

Tiago S · Answer 5 · 2017-01-12T13:03:05.500

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To take only the namespace follows the code below:

  var assembly = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetAssembly(this.GetType());//Get the assembly object
  var nameSpace = assembly.GetType().Namespace;//Get the namespace

OR

public string GetNamespace(object obj)
{
    var nameSpace = obj.GetType().Namespace;//Get the namespace

    return nameSpace;
}

edited Jan 12 '17 at 13:03

answered Apr 13 '16 at 13:32

Tiago S

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This answer is plainly wrong. `assembly.GetType()` returns a `System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly` object and the namespace for that class is obviously always `System.Reflection`. – Bitterblue Jan 12 '17 at 11:21
@Bitterblue The first code helped me at some point, but I do not remember what the application was. As soon as I find where I used the code I put more details – Tiago S Jan 12 '17 at 13:03

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 11 '16 at 10:28

1

Using Mono/Xamarin, you don't have access to the "NameSpace" property. You may use the following instead:

var str = typeof(ATypeInTheAssembly).AssemblyQualifiedName;
return str.Split(',')[1].Trim();

answered Dec 11 '16 at 10:28

Jean

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Davide Cannizzo · Answer 7 · 2022-10-02T02:28:15.540

Given an assembly should contain at least one type and every type is in a namespace that is in the assembly namespace, the shortest one of them will be the assembly namespace.

public string GetAssemblyNamespace(Assembly asm)
{
    string ns = "";

    foreach (Type tp in asm.Modules.First().GetTypes())
    {
        if (ns.Length == 0 || tp.Namespace.Length < ns.Length)
            ns = tp.Namespace;
    }

    return ns;
}

How to get Namespace of an Assembly?

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