Programming & Development

Reflection in C#: What It Is, Why It Exists

Reflection is one of those features every .Net/C# developer has used directly or indirectly. This article walks through — using a dynamic email template engine as the running example — and then tours a few real-life use cases where reflection does real work. What Is Reflection? Reflection lets code inspect and interact with types, methods, properties, and assemblies at runtime — even ones it didn't know about at compile time. It lives in the System.Reflection namespace and has been part of .NET since .NET Framework 1.0 in 2002. Type type = someObject.GetType(); PropertyInfo[] properties = type.GetProperties(); object instance = Activator.CreateInstance(type); That's the mechanism. The value of reflection only becomes clear once we see the alternative. The Problem: Life Without Reflection Imagine someone building a system that sends different kinds of emails — order confirmations, password resets, shipping updates — each with its own data merge

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