How do you get the root namespace of an assembly?

Question

Given an instance of System.Reflection.Assembly.

Answer 1

The question I had that landed me here was, "If I call library code N methods deep and want the namespace of the Project - for example the MVC app that's actually running - how do I get that?"

A little hacky but you can just grab a stacktrace and filter:

    public static string GetRootNamespace()
    {
        StackTrace stackTrace = new StackTrace();
        StackFrame[] stackFrames = stackTrace.GetFrames();
        string ns = null;
        foreach(var frame in stackFrames)
        {
            string _ns = frame.GetMethod().DeclaringType.Namespace;
            int indexPeriod = _ns.IndexOf('.');
            string rootNs = _ns;
            if (indexPeriod > 0)
                rootNs = _ns.Substring(0, indexPeriod);

            if (rootNs == "System")
                break;
            ns = _ns;
        }

        return ns;
    }

All this is doing is getting the stacktrace, running down the methods from most recently called to root, and filtering for System. Once it finds a System call it knows it's gone too far, and returns you the namespace immediately above it. Whether you're running a Unit Test, an MVC App, or a Service, the System container is going to be sitting 1 level deeper than the root namespace of your Project, so voila.

In some scenarios where System code is an intermediary (like System.Task) along the trace this is going to return the wrong answer. My goal was to take for example some startup code and let it easily find a class or Controller or whatever in the root Namespace, even if the code doing the work sits out in a library. This accomplishes that task.

I'm sure that can be improved - I'm sure this hacky way of doing things can be improved in many ways, and improvements are welcome.