Get type in referenced assembly by supplying class name as string?

Question

These are similar questions: How-to: Load a type from a referenced assembly at runtime using a string in Silverlight, GetType on a class in a referenced assembly fails but neither answer works.

I've got an MVC project that pulls data from a database that includes the plain types as strings. These types are in a referenced assembly, not in the MVC project.

So for example let's say my Referenced Assembly Name is MyFramework and the plain type name Car, the full type name could be MyFramework.Cars.Car or MyFramework.Vehicles.Cars.Car or some other variation. All I have are the referenced assembly name and plain class name as strings. How can I get the type regardless of the full type name?

Finally, could I write a function in the referenced assembly that calls GetType() and use that in the MvC project so I could forego including the assembly name? I want to remove knowing the assembly name so I thought I could write a Util IN the referenced assembly like:

namespace MyFramework //the referenced assembly
{
  public static class TypeUtil
  {
    public static Type GetFrameworkType(string typeName)
    {
        return Type.GetType(typeName);
    }
  }
}

And then in my MVC project I could call it without needing the assembly as a string name. Is that possible or will I always need the assembly name?

Answer 1

Maybe the referenced assembly isn't loaded at the time. Also, I understand from your question that you do not have the full type name, only the class name.
You should try something along this line then:

Type type = Assembly.Load("YourAssemblyName").GetTypes().First(t => t.Name == "ShortTypeName");

Hope I understood you correctly.

Answer 2

For the first question, you could do something like

Type t = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies()
                                .Where(a => a.FullName == "MyFramework")
                                .SelectMany(a => a.GetTypes())
                                .FirstOrDefault(t => t.Name == "Car");

I am not sure what you mean by the second question.