控制台应用程序不会按名称加载程序集

Question

I have a console application, which references some of my other projects in the solution. On startup, I need to do some reflection work and get the assemblies by name. Apparently, this does not work as expected.

I have a project (assembly) called MyApplication.Domain which I from my .NET MVC project can get by calling GetAssembly("MyApplication.Domain") using this method:

public static Assembly GetAssembly(string name)
{
    return AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies().SingleOrDefault(assembly => assembly.GetName().Name == name);
}

But running this on my console application, just returns null. The assembly is not even in the AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies() list.

Then if I try calling this method, using a class in the MyApplication.Domain assembly, I get the assembly back just like I wish to do using the other method?

public static Assembly[] GetAssembliesOf<T>() where T : class
{
    var assemblies = from assembly in AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies()
        from type in assembly.GetTypes()
        where typeof (T).IsAssignableFrom(type)
        where !type.IsAbstract
        select assembly;

    return assemblies.ToArray();
}
// Usage: GetAssemblyOf<MyClassInDomainAssembly>();

Things I have checked:

1. The project or assembly is referenced
2. It is set to Copy Local
3. The build is running with Any CPU like the assembly
4. The target framework the same for all projects and assemblies (4.5.1)

Is there some funky stuff I need to know about loading assemblies in console application?

As a side note the console application is actually a Self-Host Web API 2.

Answer 1

Your observations are correct and expected. .Net is lazy and the collection in question will be filled as your assemblies get loaded and they are loaded only when they are used. The fact that you can observe this in console application and not in mvc is just because your console application did less before you executed that line.

More over when you have reference to an assembly finding it by name is just pointless as you can do typeof(AnyTypeFromThatAssembly).Assembly . And if you really want to load an assembly by name you can executed Assembly.Load but this requires fully qualified assembly name which you can get again by typeof(AnyTypeFromThatAssembly).Assembly.FullName.ToString() .