Is it possible to call Activator.CreateInstance on a type in an assembly that is not statically referenced?

Question

Is is possible to user Activator.CreateInstance() to instantiate a type given the Type.FullName and Assembly Name even though the assembly is not referenced by the executing assembly?

Answer 1

Yes, first you have to load the assembly.

Suppose you have a "plugins" folder to look into:

            foreach (FileInfo f in new DirectoryInfo("c:\\plugins").GetFiles("*.dll"))
            {
                System.Reflection.Assembly.LoadFrom(f.FullName);
            }

Now assemblies are loaded and you can create the type using Activator.CreateInstance.

Answer 2

Yup. That is the beauty of Reflection. You can load the assembly by knowing it's name and then you can create a type that is declared within that assembly.