CLR SQL Assembly: Get the Bytestream?

Question

I have a SQL CLR dll I want to deploy, but have found you can embed the byte stream/varbinary_literal/ varbinary_expression/assembly bits into a text file to get around the messy hassle of packaging a DLL and making sure it's accessible for the CREATE ASSEMBLY command.

But what I have yet to find is how to get that byte stream/varbinary_literal/ varbinary_expression/assembly bits value. I haven't found any consistent terminology, and what I keep finding in using Load().

Answer 1

It's just a hex representation of the dll. This bit should do the trick:

    static string GetHexString(string assemblyPath)
    {
        if (!Path.IsPathRooted(assemblyPath))
            assemblyPath = Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, assemblyPath);

        StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
        builder.Append("0x");

        using (FileStream stream = new FileStream(assemblyPath,
              FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read))
        {
            int currentByte = stream.ReadByte();
            while (currentByte > -1)
            {
                builder.Append(currentByte.ToString("X2", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));
                currentByte = stream.ReadByte();
            }
        }

        return builder.ToString();
    }

You should use the resulting string like so:

string hexString = GetHexString(assemblyPath);
string sql = "CREATE ASSEMBLY [" + assemblyName + "] FROM " + hexString + 
             " WITH PERMISSION_SET = " + somePermissionSet;