Implementing IDispatch in c#

Question

I'm writing some test code to emulate unmanaged code calling my c# implementation of a late binding COM object. I have an interface that is declared as an IDispatch type as below.

 [Guid("2D570F11-4BD8-40e7-BF14-38772063AAF0")]
 [InterfaceType(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsDual)]
 public interface TestInterface
 {
     int Test();
 }

 [ClassInterface(ClassInterfaceType.AutoDual)]
 public class TestImpl : TestInterface 
 {
 ...
 }

When I use the code below to call IDispatch's GetIDsOfNames function

  ..
  //code provided by Hans Passant
  Object so = Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetTypeFromProgID("ProgID.Test"));
  string[] rgsNames = new string[1];
  int[] rgDispId = new int[1];
  rgsNames[0] = "Test";

  //the next line throws an exception
  IDispatch disp = (IDispatch)so;

Where IDispatch is defined as:

 //code provided by Hans Passant
 [ComImport, InterfaceType(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown), Guid("00020400-0000-0000-C000-000000000046")]
 private interface IDispatch {
     int GetTypeInfoCount();
     [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Interface)]
     ITypeInfo GetTypeInfo([In, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int iTInfo, [In, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int lcid);
     void GetIDsOfNames([In] ref Guid riid, [In, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPArray)] string[] rgszNames, [In, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int cNames, [In, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int lcid, [Out, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPArray)] int[] rgDispId);
  }

An InvalidCastException is thrown. Is it possible to cast a c# interface into IDispatch?

Answer 1

You should just be able to use reflection on the COM type to get the list of methods.

Type comType = Type.GetTypeFromProgID("ProgID.Test");
MethodInfo[] methods = comType.GetMethods();