How To Execute A .NET Assembly Inside A C# Program

ALL ABOUT COMPUTER SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Publish perfectly-optimized content in 1-click




How To Execute A .NET Assembly Inside A C# Program


It's very easy to call a .NET assembly (a compiled C# program – exe or DLL) within another one.

To see how it works, I created a simple roject that prints hello world

using System;


namespace hello
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");


        }
    }
}

using System;
</br>
namespace hello
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
</br>
        }
    }
}

Now I created another project to execute the .Net assebly of the previous project

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Reflection;


namespace LoadAssembly
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {


            Byte[] bytes = File.ReadAllBytes(@"C:/Users/dzosoft/source/repos/Hello/bin/Debug/Hello.exe");




            Assembly assembly = Assembly.Load(bytes);
            MethodInfo method = assembly.EntryPoint;
            string[] param = new string[] { "hi" };
            object[] parameters = new[] { param };


            object execute = method.Invoke(null, parameters);


        }
    }
}

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Reflection;
</br>
namespace LoadAssembly
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
</br>
            Byte[] bytes = File.ReadAllBytes(@"C:/Users/dzosoft/source/repos/Hello/bin/Debug/Hello.exe");
</br>
</br>
            Assembly assembly = Assembly.Load(bytes);
            MethodInfo method = assembly.EntryPoint;
            string[] param = new string[] { "hi" };
            object[] parameters = new[] { param };
</br>
            object execute = method.Invoke(null, parameters);
</br>
        }
    }
}


That will work and print out “hello world!”. This works for DLLs too, change the file to have this instead and build it again.

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Reflection;


namespace LoadAssembly
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {


            Byte[] bytes = File.ReadAllBytes(@"/Users/guru/hello.dll");




            Assembly assembly = Assembly.Load(bytes);
            MethodInfo method = assembly.EntryPoint;
            string[] param = new string[] { "hi" };
            object[] parameters = new[] { param };


            object execute = method.Invoke(null,parameters);


        }




    }
}

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Reflection;
</br>
namespace LoadAssembly
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
</br>
            Byte[] bytes = File.ReadAllBytes(@"/Users/guru/hello.dll");
</br>
</br>
            Assembly assembly = Assembly.Load(bytes);
            MethodInfo method = assembly.EntryPoint;
            string[] param = new string[] { "hi" };
            object[] parameters = new[] { param };
</br>
            object execute = method.Invoke(null,parameters);
</br>
        }
</br>
</br>
    }
}

It might also interest you

C# Get Started

Using ChatGPT in C#

Quick overview of the differences between C# and Visual Basic .NET

How to create a local MySQL connection in C#