Getting a list of all available namespaces in an AppDomain

Question

I need to 'scan' the active AppDomain for all loaded assemblies at run time and get a list of unique namespaces available in those assemblies, does .NET support that?

The code must execute during the run time, so that the code is dynamic.

I just started coding in C# , so I'm a bit unsure about where to get started, so any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

As a matter of fact I wrote some code that lets you do that a couple of days ago.

Use this class:

    public class NSScanner
    {
        public static List<Type> GetLoadedTypes(AppDomain appDomain)
        {
            return _getLoadedTypes(appDomain);
        }

        public static List<Type> GetPublicLoadedTypes(AppDomain appDomain)
        {
            return _getLoadedTypes(appDomain, true);
        }

        public static List<string> GetUniqueNamespaces(IEnumerable<Type> types)
        {
            var uniqueNamespaces = new ConcurrentBag<string>();

            Parallel.ForEach(types, type =>
            {
                if (!uniqueNamespaces.Contains(type.Namespace) && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(type.Namespace))
                    uniqueNamespaces.Add(type.Namespace);
            });

            var sortedList = uniqueNamespaces.OrderBy(o => o).ToList();

            return sortedList;
        }


        private static List<Type> _getLoadedTypes(AppDomain appDomain, bool onlyPublicTypes = false)
        {
            var loadedAssemblies = appDomain.GetAssemblies();

            var loadedTypes = new List<Type>();

            Parallel.ForEach(loadedAssemblies, asm =>
            {
                Type[] asmTypes;
                if (onlyPublicTypes)
                    asmTypes = asm.GetExportedTypes();
                else
                    asmTypes = asm.GetTypes();

                loadedTypes.AddRange(asmTypes);
            });

            return loadedTypes;
        }
    }

Usage:

var publicLoadedTypes = NSScanner.GetPublicLoadedTypes(AppDomain.CurrentDomain);
var namespaces = NSScanner.GetUniqueNamespaces(publicLoadedTypes);

Enjoy!