How to create an instance of value types using reflection

c# .net reflection value-type
Hemanshu Bhojak picture Hemanshu Bhojak · Jan 4, 2010 · Viewed 8k times · Source

I want to create an instance of value types like System.String, System.Boolean, System.Int32, etc. I get qualified names of types like System.String or MyNamespace.Employee and I have to create an instance and return back. I use Activator.CreateInstance and FormatterServices.GetUninitializedObject to create instances. But it fails in case of value types. I cannot hard code the logic in case of value types. I need a generic way of creating instances of both value types and reference types.

Answer

Marc Gravell picture Marc Gravell · Jan 4, 2010

What exactly is it you are trying to do? FormatterServices.GetUninitializedObject is used mainly by serialization code; outside of that you shouldn't really use it. It sounds like you might just need something like TypeConverter, i.e. (for these types)

TypeConverter tc = TypeDescriptor.GetConverter(someType);
object obj = tc.ConvertFromString(s);

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