C#.NET - Type.GetType(“System.Windows.Forms.Form”) returns null

Question

I have a snippet of code in my application (which references System.Windows.Forms) which attempts to resolve type information for a Form class like so:

Answer 1

Type.GetType(string) checks a few different things: if the string passed includes assembly information, then it will look there. Otherwise, the calling assembly and a few other system assemblies are checked (probably System and mscorlib). It does not check every assembly.

So, you have a few options:

• include the assembly information in the string, i.e. "Namespace.TypeName, AssemblyName"
• use assembly.GetType(string), where assembly is the correct assembly
• manually loop over all the assemblies loaded in the current AppDomain, checking each in turn