Can I load a .NET assembly at runtime and instantiate a type knowing only the name?

Question

Is it possible to instantiate an object at runtime if I only have the DLL name and the class name, without adding a reference to the assembly in the project? The class imple

Answer 1

I found this question and some answers very useful, however I did have path problems, so this answer would cover loading library by finding bin directory path.

First solution:

string assemblyName = "library.dll";
string assemblyPath = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/bin/" + assemblyName);
Assembly assembly = Assembly.LoadFrom(assemblyPath);
Type T = assembly.GetType("Company.Project.Classname");
Company.Project.Classname instance = (Company.Project.Classname) Activator.CreateInstance(T);

Second solution

string assemblyName = "library.dll";
string assemblyPath = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/bin/" + assemblyName);
Assembly assembly = Assembly.LoadFile(assemblyPath);
(Company.Project.Classname) instance = (Company.Project.Classname) assembly.CreateInstance("Company.Project.Classname");

You can use same principle for interfaces (you would be creating a class but casting to interface), such as:

(Company.Project.Interfacename) instance = (Company.Project.Interfacename) assembly.CreateInstance("Company.Project.Classname");

This example is for web application but similar could be used for Desktop application, only path is resolved in different way, for example

Path.GetDirectoryName(Application.ExecutablePath)