Discovering Type Information at Run Time

The classes in the Reflection namespace, together with System.Type, allow you to obtain information about loaded assemblies and the types defined within them, such as classes, interfaces, and value types. You can also use reflection to create type instances at run time, and to invoke and access them.

In This Section

• Reflection Overview
  Explains reflection and its main uses.
• Viewing Type Information
  Describes the System.Type class and provides code examples that illustrate how to use System.Type with several reflection classes to obtain information about constructors, methods, fields, properties, and events.
• Design Patterns Used by Reflection Classes
  Provides a table showing the method naming pattern and use of the most frequently used reflection classes, such as the Module, Type, and MemberInfo classes.
• Security Considerations for Reflection
  Describes the rules that determine to what degree reflection can be used to discover type information and access types.
• Dynamically Loading and Using Types
  Describes the reflection custom-binding interface that supports late binding.
• Accessing Default Members
  Demonstrates how to use reflection to access default members that a class might have.
• Accessing Default Argument Values
  Demonstrates how to use reflection to access arguments that have default values, and how to invoke methods that have arguments with default values.
• Accessing Custom Attributes
  Demonstrates using reflection to query attribute existence and values.
• Specifying Fully Qualified Type Names
  Describes the format of fully qualified type names in terms of the Backus-Naur form (BNF), and the syntax required for specifying special characters, assembly names, pointers, references, and arrays.

Related Sections

• System.Reflection.Emit
  Describes the major features of the Emit namespace.