Reflection

.NET Framework's Reflection API allows you to fetch type (assembly) information at runtime programmatically. We can also achieve late binding by using .NET Reflection. At runtime, the Reflection mechanism uses the PE file to read information about the assembly. Reflection enables you to use code that is not available at compile time. .NET Reflection allows an application to collect information about itself and also to manipulate on itself. It can be used effectively to find all types in an assembly and/or dynamically invoke methods in an assembly. This includes information about the type, properties, methods, and events of an object. With Reflection, we can dynamically create an instance of a type, bind the type to an existing object, or get the type from an existing object and invoke its methods or access its fields and properties. We can also access attribute information using Reflection.

Using Reflection, you can get any kind of information which you can see in a class viewer; for example, information on the methods, properties, fields, and events of an object.

The System.Reflection namespace and the System.Type class plays a very important role in .NET Reflection. These two work together and allow you to reflect over many other aspects of a type.