Introduction to Reflection in C#

Understand what Reflection is in C#, how it works, and practical use cases for inspecting and interacting with types at runtime.

What is Reflection?

Reflection in C# is a powerful feature that allows a program to inspect its own structure at runtime. This includes examining classes, methods, properties, and attributes without knowing them at compile time.

Why Use Reflection?

Reflection is commonly used in scenarios such as building serialization libraries, dependency injection frameworks, unit testing tools, and plugin systems where types need to be discovered and used dynamically.

How Reflection Works

Using the System.Reflection namespace, developers can retrieve Type objects, invoke methods dynamically, read custom attributes, and even create instances of classes without knowing their exact names in advance.

Performance Considerations

While extremely flexible, reflection comes with a performance cost compared to direct method calls. It should be used judiciously, typically in framework-level code rather than performance-critical application logic.