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Get rid of COM Interop DLL by using the new C# 4 dynamic keyword

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7 Jan 2011CPOL 37K   11   4
How to instantiate a COM object wrapper and call a method at runtime

Up to now, to call a COM object from managed code, you had to either:



  • make a reference to the COM instance from your Visual Studio project (which means you had to have the COM object setup on your development machine)
  • or make a reference to a precompiled assembly containing your COM interop wrapper

With the new framework .NET and C# 4 comes the dynamic keyword that allows binding to an object's method at runtime using the underlying DLR.


So to make thing short, the only thing you've got to do to interop with a COM object is to instantiate it using an activator as a dynamic variable and call a runtime bound method on it, in two lines:


dynamic comInterop= Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetTypeFromProgID("MyCOM.Object.Name"));
var result = comInterop.MethodCall(parameter);

Hope this helps! :-)

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)


Written By
Software Developer (Senior)
France France
A happy .NET developper, fond of all the new bits of technologies M$ has to offer.

I code in C# using WPF, Linq, WCF and SQL Server all day long and I'm paied for that Smile | :)

Comments and Discussions

 
QuestionInconsistent crashes in C# application which uses COM interop Pin
AmodVKulkarni14-Jun-12 2:51
AmodVKulkarni14-Jun-12 2:51 
AnswerRe: Inconsistent crashes in C# application which uses COM interop Pin
Philippe Bouteleux14-Jun-12 4:25
Philippe Bouteleux14-Jun-12 4:25 
QuestionObject Required Pin
ttflim21-Apr-12 14:15
ttflim21-Apr-12 14:15 
AnswerRe: Object Required Pin
Philippe Bouteleux14-Jun-12 4:31
Philippe Bouteleux14-Jun-12 4:31 

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