I would like to list all the sub classes of a given class name in a DLL using reflection in C#.

First create a class library, mydll.dll, from the code below:

public class ClassA {}

public class ClassB : ClassA {}

public class ClassC : ClassA {}

public class ClassD : ClassC {}

Now create a console app from the following code and place the dll in the executable's folder:

using System;

using System.Reflection;

using System.Collections.Generic;

class Test

{

static Assembly assembly;

static void Main()

{

assembly = Assembly.LoadFrom("mydll.dll");

IList list = GetAllSubClasses("ClassA");

foreach(string typeName in list) Console.WriteLine(typeName);

Console.ReadKey();

}

static IList GetAllSubClasses(string parentClassName)

{

List list = new List();

foreach(Type t in assembly.GetTypes())

{

if (t.BaseType.FullName == parentClassName) list.Add(t.FullName);

}

return list;

}

}

The output should be:

ClassB

ClassC

Notice that ClassD is not returned because, whilst it ultimately derives from ClassA (via ClassC), it's not a direct sub-class of it.

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