Visual Basic® 2010 Unleashed

Generating Code at Runtime with Reflection.Emit

The System.Reflection.Emit namespace provides objects for generating assemblies, types, and type members at runtime. Basically you need to perform the following operations sequentially:

1. Create an in-memory assembly within the current application domain with an instance of the AssemblyBuilder class.

2. Create a module for containing types via an instance of the ModuleBuilder class.

3. Create types with instances of the TypeBuilder class.

4. Add members to the TypeBuilder via XBuilder objects, such as MethodBuilder, FieldBuilder, and PropertyBuilder.

5. Save the assembly to disk if required.

The code in Listing 47.4 demonstrates how to create dynamically a simple implementation of the Person ...