How to get Namespace of an Assembly?

Question

Consider i have an assembly(class library dll) which i have loaded using the following code,

Assembly a = Assembly.LoadFrom(@"C:\Documents and Settings\E454935\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\nunit_dll_hutt\for_hutt_proj\bin\Debug\asdf.dll");   

and i need to get the type of the Assembly. In order to get the type i need the namespace of the assembly.

Type t = asm.GetType("NAMESPACE.CLASSNAME",false,true);             

how can i get the Namespace in the above line.?! as inorder to get the Namespace, i need to get the type..?

Type.Namespace;

i.e i need to get the Namespace of the assembly which can be used to get its Type.

Thanks in advance

Solution 1

Use

Assembly.GetTypes();

This will get you a collection of all types and then you can get the Namespace property for each of them.

Then I guess you can simply check that all the types have same Namespace value and use this value. Otherwise add some other logic to detect what namespace to consider primary.

Solution 2

An assembly can contain multiple namespaces. I think what you really want to ask is how to get a type from an assembly without specifying the namespace.

I don't know if there is a better way, but you can try looking for the specific type like this (add - using linq;):

myassembly.GetTypes().SingleOrDefault(t => t.Name == "ClassName")

This will effectively throw if there is more than 1 class with that name under different namespaces (because the Single method ensures there is only 1).

For a list of the namespaces for that class you can:

Assembly.Load("ClassName").GetTypes().Select(t => t.Namespace).Distinct();

Solution 3

Updated:

IF the assembly name & assembly namespace are same in your project and you sure keep theme same AND you want get the namespace of the current executed Assembly then you can use this:

var namespace = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().Name;

And for your loaded assembly:

var namespace = myAssembly.GetName().Name;

---

But IF the assembly name & assembly namespace are not same in your project then you can use this way:

// Like @eglasius answer >>
// Find all namespaces in the target assembly where a class with the following name is exists:
var namespaceList=Assembly.Load("MyClassName").GetTypes().Select(t => t.Namespace).Distinct();

Solution 4

Assembly.GetName().Name will get you the default namespace

Solution 5

Using Mono/Xamarin, you don't have access to the "NameSpace" property. You may use the following instead:

var str = typeof(ATypeInTheAssembly).AssemblyQualifiedName;
return str.Split(',')[1].Trim();

View more solutions

Comments

[Cerebrus]

In addition, an assembly can contain multiple types even within the same namespace. The OP needs to understand this concept.

[Syroot]

Isn't that user-defined metadata? It could be anything then.

[Mark A. Donohoe]

No, this is the name of the file. It doesn't have to have anything to do with the namespace.

[ErikE]

The assembly name is not the same thing as the assembly's namespace, or the namespace of any particular type within that assembly. So unfortunately, this answer is incorrect.

[Ramin Bateni]

@ErikE, Thank u for your hint. I know the question has been answered, my answer was a secondary way for this case: By default they are equal and in some cases developers keep them same, so In this cases my answer is correct. I updated my answer with an additional IF.

[Bitterblue]

This answer is plainly wrong. assembly.GetType() returns a System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly object and the namespace for that class is obviously always System.Reflection.

[Tiago S]

@Bitterblue The first code helped me at some point, but I do not remember what the application was. As soon as I find where I used the code I put more details

[Gianpiero]

this is the name of the file. It doesn't have to have anything to do with the namespace

[Najeeb]

Thanks, this answer is better.