initialize a class by string variable in c#?

Question

is it possible to initialize a class by a string variable? I have code in PHP.

<?php
  $classname = "test";

  $oTest = new $classname();

  class test{
  }
?>

how do I do this in c#?

Solution 1

System.Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(className))

The problem, however, is that C# 3.0 is a statically typed language. You can't just call random methods on the returned object. You can have the classes you might instantiate implement some common interface and cast the result of the above expression to the interface or manually use reflection to call methods on the returned object.

Solution 2

You can use the Activator.CreateInstance method to achieve a similar result. But you will have to provide the assembly name in addition to the fully qualified name of the type

var instance = Activator.CreateInstance("SomeAssemblyName","Some.Full.Type.Test");

Solution 3

You can use Activator.CreateInstance. The documentation for the various overloads is here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.activator.createinstance.aspx

Comments

[Ben Griswold]

Seeing the answer helped me understand the question. +1

[Colin Mackay]

What do you mean by "C#, as of Version 3.0 is a statically typed language". That suggests it only recently became a statically typed language. It always has been. In C# 4.0 there is the new dynamic keyword which means that C# will get some aspects of dynamic languages if desired.

[mmx]

Colin: I might have worded it ambiguously. Fixed.