All code snippets are taken from a “real boy” build-able solution.
If something isn’t working for you, make sure the solution builds.
Like any factory pattern, this allows for a interface to be instantiated without specifying a class.
Use Cases, Switch Based On:
This allows implementations to cleanly and easily be split into individual files. These files don’t even need to all be in the same assembly!
Reflection can be slow and/or dangerous.
Avoid running untrusted code (such as directly from user input) or making heavy calls such as to
GetTypesrepeatedly.
As such: We’re going to put this into the static constructor, caching the results as much as possible.
// Requires assemblies to be loaded. LoadAssembliesOnStartup.Fody does a clever job.
// Do as much caching as possible, Reflection can be heavy!
static readonly List<Type> AllTypes = new List<Type>();
static readonly Type[] PluginTypes;
static Plugin()
{
foreach (var reference in Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().GetReferencedAssemblies())
{
try
{
AllTypes.AddRange(Assembly.Load(reference).GetTypes());
}
catch (ReflectionTypeLoadException e)
{
AllTypes.AddRange(e.Types);
}
}
PluginTypes = AllTypes
.Where(t => typeof(IPlugin).IsAssignableFrom(t))
.Where(t => t.IsClass)
.ToArray();
}
If all the required types are in the current assembly, AllTypes can be simply Assembly.GetAssembly.GetTypes().
private static Dictionary<string, Type> ResultCache = new Dictionary<string, Type>();
public static IPlugin New()
{
if (!ResultCache.ContainsKey("")) {
var defaultType = typeof(DefaultPlugin);
ResultCache[""] = PluginTypes
.FirstOrDefault(t => t != defaultType);
}
if (ResultCache[""] != null) {
return (IPlugin) Activator.CreateInstance(ResultCache[""]);
}
return null;
}
Obviously the cache in this example does not need to be a dictionary. However, this matches a real world use-case more closely, and was therefore better for timing benchmarks.
Now you can instantiate the interface without calling the class directly, therefore allowing the correct implementation to be chosen from the arguments passed to New() (left as an exercise for the reader, obviously, there are no arguments in this example).