C# Getting Type out of a string variable and using it in generic method

Question

I want to be able to get the actual Type of a string value I receive by some means (i.e from database) so I can use that Type in generic method like DoSomething

Answer 1

If you want to invoke a Generic Method with a Type parameter generate at Runtime, you could do something like this:

var vehicleString = "Car";

// use the fully-qualified name of the type here
// (assuming Car is in the same assembly as this code, 
//  if not add a ", TargetAssemblyName" to the end of the string)
var vehicleType = 
    Type.GetType($"MyCompany.MySolution.Vehicle.Implementations.{vehicleString}");

// assuming MyFactory is the name of the class 
// containing the Register-Method
typeof(MyFactory).GetMethod("Register")
    .MakeGenericMethod(vehicleType)
    .Invoke(this);

Working Example

Just as a note:

This is not how generics are supposed to be used. I'm just pointing out the possibility, not giving you an ideal answer to the problem you're proposing. Maybe you should rethink some of your architectural design choices!