Get all Assembly Information

Introduction

With assembly attributes it is possible to specify assembly meta information such as product title or version, either automatically by Visual Studio (see here for more information) or manually by editing the file "AssemblyInfo.cs" in the project folder "Properties".

With the class provided with this tip these attributes can be easily read from any assembly.

To obtain information of an assembly the constructor of AssemblyInfo can be used by passing the specific assembly.

If the corresponding assembly attribute to a property is not found, <code>null will be returned.

Usage

This example will write all assembly information of the entry assembly to the console.

AssemblyInfo entryAssemblyInfo = new AssemblyInfo(Assembly.GetEntryAssembly());
Console.WriteLine("Company: " + entryAssemblyInfo.Company);
Console.WriteLine("Copyright: " + entryAssemblyInfo.Copyright);
Console.WriteLine("Description: " + entryAssemblyInfo.Description);
Console.WriteLine("Product: " + entryAssemblyInfo.Product);
Console.WriteLine("ProductTitle: " + entryAssemblyInfo.ProductTitle);
Console.WriteLine("Version: " + entryAssemblyInfo.Version);

The Class

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
using System.Reflection;

namespace HdSystemLibrary.Reflection
{
    public class AssemblyInfo
    {
        public AssemblyInfo(Assembly assembly)
        {
            if (assembly == null)
                throw new ArgumentNullException("assembly");
            this.assembly = assembly;
        }

        private readonly Assembly assembly;

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets the title property
        /// </summary>
        public string ProductTitle
        {
            get
            {
                return GetAttributeValue<AssemblyTitleAttribute>(a => a.Title, 
                       Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(assembly.CodeBase));
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets the application's version
        /// </summary>
        public string Version
        {
            get
            {
                string result = string.Empty;
                Version version = assembly.GetName().Version;
                if (version != null)
                    return version.ToString();
                else
                    return "1.0.0.0";
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets the description about the application.
        /// </summary>
        public string Description
        {
            get { return GetAttributeValue<AssemblyDescriptionAttribute>(a => a.Description); }
        }


        /// <summary>
        ///  Gets the product's full name.
        /// </summary>
        public string Product
        {
            get { return GetAttributeValue<AssemblyProductAttribute>(a => a.Product); }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets the copyright information for the product.
        /// </summary>
        public string Copyright
        {
            get { return GetAttributeValue<AssemblyCopyrightAttribute>(a => a.Copyright); }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets the company information for the product.
        /// </summary>
        public string Company
        {
            get { return GetAttributeValue<AssemblyCompanyAttribute>(a => a.Company); }
        }

        protected string GetAttributeValue<TAttr>(Func<TAttr, 
          string> resolveFunc, string defaultResult = null) where TAttr : Attribute
        {
            object[] attributes = assembly.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(TAttr), false);
            if (attributes.Length > 0)
                return resolveFunc((TAttr)attributes[0]);
            else
                return defaultResult;
        }
    }
}