.net - How Type.GetType works when given partially qualified type name?

Question

In numerous places do I encounter partially qualified type names of the form FullTypeName, AssemblyName, i.e. like Type.AssemblyQualifiedName only without the version, culture and publicKeyToken qualifiers.

My question is how can one convert it to the respective Type in a minimum of effort? I thought that Type.GetType does the job, but alas, it does not. The following code, for instance, returns null:

Type.GetType("System.Net.Sockets.SocketException, System");

Of course, if I specify the fully qualified name it does work:

Type.GetType("System.Net.Sockets.SocketException, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089");

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

If the assembly has been loaded in the current domain then the code below usually works:

public static Type GetTypeEx(string fullTypeName)
{
    return Type.GetType(fullTypeName) ??
           AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies()
                    .Select(a => a.GetType(fullTypeName))
                    .FirstOrDefault(t => t != null);
}

You can use it like so:

Type t = GetTypeEx("System.Net.Sockets.SocketException");