Pro C Sharp 2008 and the dotNET 3.5 Platform

1400 Pages·2007·23.87 MB·English

by  Andrew Troelsen

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The first edition of this book was released at the 2001 Tech·Ed conference in OOffffeerr eennddss JJuunnee 3300,, 22000088..
Atlanta, Georgia. (I honestly can’t believe it was that long ago!) Since that time, C
this text has been revised, tweaked, and enhanced to account for the changes
Pro
found within each release of the .NET platform (1.1, 2.0, 3.0, and now 3.5).
.NET 3.0 was more of an augmentative release, essentially providing three new
APIs: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication
Author of Foundation (WCF), and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). As you would
Pro VB 2008 and the expect, coverage of the “W’s” has been expanded upon a great deal from the # C# 2008
.NET 3.5 Platform previous Special Edition of this text.
COM and .NET Unlike .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5 provides dozens of new C# language features and .NET and
Interoperability APIs. This edition of the book will walk you through all of this new material using
the same readable approach (at least that is what I have been told!) as found
Expert ASP.NET 2.0
Advanced Application in the prior editions. Rest assured, you’ll find detailed coverage of Language the
Design Integrated Query (LINQ), the C# 2008 language changes (automatic properties,
2008
extension methods, anonymous types, etc.), and the numerous bells and whistles
Developer’s Workshop
to COM and ATL 3.0 of Visual Studio 2008.
If you’re checking out this book for the first time, understand that it targets .NET 3.5 Platform
experienced software professionals and/or students of computer science (so
and the
please don’t expect three chapters devoted to “for loops”). The mission of this
text is to provide you with a rock-solid foundation in the C# 2008 programming
language and the core aspects of the .NET platform (OOP, assemblies, file IO,
Windows Forms/WPF, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, WCF, WF, etc.). Once you digest the P.
information presented in these 33 chapters, you’ll be in a perfect position to N
apply this knowledge to your specific programming assignments, and you’ll be
l
well equipped to explore the .NET universe on your own terms.
a
E
Take care and enjoy,
Andrew Troelsen t Exploring the .NET universe using curly brackets
Microsoft MVP, Visual Developer—Visual C# fT
o
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Pro C# 2008 and the
.NET 3.5 Platform
Fourth Edition
Andrew Troelsen
8849FM.qxd 10/19/07 9:45 AM Page ii
Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform,Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2007 by Andrew Troelsen
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This edition of the text is dedicated to Mikko the wonder cat,life at 412,and my wonderful
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8849FM.qxd 10/19/07 9:45 AM Page iv
Contents
About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi
About the Technical Reviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviii
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
Part 1 n n nIntroducing C# and the .NET Platform
nCHAPTER 1 The Philosophy of .NET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Understanding the Previous State of Affairs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
The .NET Solution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Introducing the Building Blocks of the .NET Platform (the CLR,CTS,
and CLS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Additional .NET-Aware Programming Languages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
An Overview of .NET Assemblies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Understanding the Common Type System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Understanding the Common Language Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Understanding the Common Language Runtime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
The Assembly/Namespace/Type Distinction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Exploring an Assembly Using ildasm.exe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Exploring an Assembly Using Lutz Roeder’s Reflector. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Deploying the .NET Runtime. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
The Platform-Independent Nature of .NET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
nCHAPTER 2 Building C# Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
The Role of the .NET Framework 3.5 SDK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Building C# Applications Using csc.exe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Building .NET Applications Using TextPad. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Building .NET Applications Using Notepad++. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Building .NET Applications Using SharpDevelop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Building .NET Applications Using Visual C# 2008 Express . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Building .NET Applications Using Visual Studio 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
A Partial Catalog of Additional .NET Development Tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
iv
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nCONTENTS v
Part 2 n n nCore C# Programming Constructs
nCHAPTER 3 Core C# Programming Constructs,Part I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
The Anatomy of a Simple C# Program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
An Interesting Aside:Some Additional Members of the
System.Environment Class. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
The System.Console Class. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
System Data Types and C# Shorthand Notation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Understanding the System.String Type. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Narrowing and Widening Data Type Conversions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
C# Iteration Constructs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Decision Constructs and the Relational/Equality Operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
nCHAPTER 4 Core C# Programming Constructs,Part II. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Methods and Parameter Modifiers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Understanding Member Overloading. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Array Manipulation in C#. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Understanding the Enum Type. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Understanding the Structure Type. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Understanding Value Types and Reference Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Value and Reference Types:Final Details. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Understanding C# Nullable Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
nCHAPTER 5 Defining Encapsulated Class Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Introducing the C# Class Type. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Understanding Class Constructors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
The Role of the this Keyword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Understanding the static Keyword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Defining the Pillars of OOP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
C# Access Modifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
The First Pillar:C#’s Encapsulation Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Understanding Constant Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Understanding Read-Only Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Understanding Partial Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Documenting C# Source Code via XML. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Visualizing the Fruits of Our Labor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
nCHAPTER 6 Understanding Inheritance and Polymorphism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
The Basic Mechanics of Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Revising Visual Studio Class Diagrams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
The Second Pillar:The Details of Inheritance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Programming for Containment/Delegation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
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vi nCONTENTS
The Third Pillar:C#’s Polymorphic Support. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Understanding Base Class/Derived Class Casting Rules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
The Master Parent Class:System.Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
nCHAPTER 7 Understanding Structured Exception Handling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Ode to Errors,Bugs,and Exceptions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
The Role of .NET Exception Handling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
The Simplest Possible Example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Configuring the State of an Exception. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
System-Level Exceptions (System.SystemException). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Application-Level Exceptions (System.ApplicationException). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Processing Multiple Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
The Finally Block . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Who Is Throwing What? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
The Result of Unhandled Exceptions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Debugging Unhandled Exceptions Using Visual Studio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
nCHAPTER 8 Understanding Object Lifetime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Classes,Objects,and References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
The Basics of Object Lifetime. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
The Role of Application Roots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Understanding Object Generations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
The System.GC Type. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
Building Finalizable Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Building Disposable Objects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Building Finalizable and Disposable Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Part 3 n n nAdvanced C# Programming Constructs
nCHAPTER 9 Working with Interfaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Understanding Interface Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Defining Custom Interfaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Implementing an Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
Invoking Interface Members at the Object Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
Interfaces As Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
Interfaces As Return Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Arrays of Interface Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Implementing Interfaces Using Visual Studio 2008. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
Resolving Name Clashes via Explicit Interface Implementation. . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Designing Interface Hierarchies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Building Enumerable Types (IEnumerable and IEnumerator) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Building Cloneable Objects (ICloneable) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
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nCONTENTS vii
Building Comparable Objects (IComparable). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Understanding Callback Interfaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
nCHAPTER 10 Collections and Generics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
The Interfaces of the System.Collections Namespace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
The Class Types of System.Collections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
System.Collections.Specialized Namespace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
The Boxing,Unboxing,and System.Object Relationship. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
The Issue of Type Safety and Strongly Typed Collections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
The System.Collections.Generic Namespace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
Creating Custom Generic Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
Creating Generic Structures and Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
Creating a Custom Generic Collection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
Creating Generic Base Classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
Creating Generic Interfaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
nCHAPTER 11 Delegates,Events,and Lambdas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
Understanding the .NET Delegate Type. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
Defining a Delegate in C#. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
The System.MulticastDelegate and System.Delegate Base Classes. . . . . . . . . 344
The Simplest Possible Delegate Example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Retrofitting the Car Type with Delegates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
A More Elaborate Delegate Example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Understanding Delegate Covariance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
Creating Generic Delegates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
Understanding C# Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
The Generic EventHandler<T> Delegate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
Understanding C# Anonymous Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
Understanding Method Group Conversions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
The C# 2008 Lambda Operator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
nCHAPTER 12 Indexers,Operators,and Pointers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
Understanding Indexer Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
Understanding Operator Overloading. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
Understanding Custom Type Conversions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Working with Pointer Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
C# Preprocessor Directives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
nCHAPTER 13 C# 2008 Language Features. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Understanding Implicitly Typed Local Variables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Understanding Automatic Properties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
Understanding Extension Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
8849FM.qxd 10/19/07 9:45 AM Page viii
viii nCONTENTS
Understanding Partial Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
Understanding Object Initializer Syntax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
Understanding Anonymous Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
nCHAPTER 14 An Introduction to LINQ. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
Understanding the Role of LINQ. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
A First Look at LINQ Query Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
LINQ and Generic Collections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456
LINQ and Nongeneric Collections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
The Internal Representation of LINQ Query Operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
Investigating the C# LINQ Query Operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
LINQ Queries:An Island unto Themselves?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
PART 4 n n nProgramming with .NET Assemblies
nCHAPTER 15 Introducing .NET Assemblies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
Defining Custom Namespaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
The Role of .NET Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
Understanding the Format of a .NET Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
Building and Consuming a Single-File Assembly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
Building and Consuming a Multifile Assembly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496
Understanding Private Assemblies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499
Understanding Shared Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504
Consuming a Shared Assembly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510
Configuring Shared Assemblies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512
Investigating the Internal Composition of the GAC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516
Understanding Publisher Policy Assemblies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518
Understanding the <codeBase> Element. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519
The System.Configuration Namespace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521
The Machine Configuration File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522
nCHAPTER 16 Type Reflection,Late Binding,and Attribute-Based
Programming. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523
The Necessity of Type Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523
Understanding Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
Building a Custom Metadata Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530
Dynamically Loading Assemblies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536
Reflecting on Shared Assemblies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538
Understanding Late Binding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539