How do I find the fully qualified name of an assembly?

Question

How do I find out the fully qualified name of my assembly such as:

MyNamespace.MyAssembly, version=1.0.3300.0, 
Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089

I've managed to get my PublicKeyToken using the sn.exe in the SDK, but I'ld like to easily get the full qualified name.

David Clarke · Answer 1 · 2013-07-04T21:09:46.517

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This is a shameless copy-paste from I Note It Down and is a simple way to get the FQN for the project output:

Open Visual Studio
Go to Tools –> External Tools –> Add
    Title: Get Qualified Assembly Name
    Command: Powershell.exe
    Arguments: -command "[System.Reflection.AssemblyName]::GetAssemblyName(\"$(TargetPath)\").FullName"
    Check "Use Output Window".

The new tool appears under Tools –> Get Qualified Assembly Name. When the menu item is selected, the assembly name is given in the output window.

edited Jul 04 '13 at 21:09

answered Jul 01 '13 at 02:16

David Clarke

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Microsoft, The year is 2015. Please provide us with a better alternative to get the fully qualified assembly name. – vijayst Sep 15 '15 at 07:02
2

This should be the selected answer – M3579 Jan 02 '16 at 01:47
2

Seconding @M3579's comment, have some bounty. – Etheryte Mar 07 '16 at 22:05
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This is the most convenient way of checking this ever! – tomalone Jun 03 '16 at 16:29
The question did not specify "for the current project." I suspect the author wants this for any assembly, including dependencies. – Chris Bordeman Nov 08 '17 at 18:20

Hallgrim · Accepted Answer · 2009-03-18T14:56:36.243

36

If you can load the assembly into a .NET application, you can do:

typeof(SomeTypeInTheAssembly).Assembly.FullName

If you cannot then you can use ildasm.exe and it will be in there somewhere:

ildasm.exe MyAssembly.dll /text

edited Mar 18 '09 at 14:56

answered Mar 18 '09 at 14:23

Hallgrim

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Actually, that gives you the assembly in which SomeTypeInTheAssembly resides, which you may not have at compile time. – Dave Van den Eynde Mar 18 '09 at 14:29
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And I'm not sure "in there somewhere" qualifies as an answer. That ildasm command results in a wall of text, not well formatted. Several of the suggestions below are more complete. – Michael Blackburn Aug 01 '12 at 15:52
You can search the output for "MyAssembly, Version=" to find it. If you have grep installed: ildasm.exe MyAssembly.dll /text | grep -A 1 "MyAssembly, Version=" – NotDan Aug 05 '15 at 16:40
Unfortunately when the Assembly is obfuscated then the solution with ildasm.exe will not work. – Patrick Jul 11 '17 at 13:35
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```ildasm.exe MyAssembly.dll /text``` does NOT contain full assembly name anywhere in the text. This method is misleading and inaccurate. – Puterdo Borato Nov 09 '17 at 11:47

score 25 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 07 '13 at 12:01

Late to the party, but googled some more about this issue and found this page:

http://www.pvle.be/2010/04/getting-an-assemblys-strong-name-with-powershell/

He describes a powershell function that can do this. So. I've never ever used powershell before, but I thought I'd give it a try:

C:\> cd PATH_TO_ASSEMBLY   
C:\PATH_TO_ASSEMBLY>powershell
Windows PowerShell
Copyright (C) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

PS C:\PATH_TO_ASSEMBLY> [System.Reflection.AssemblyName]::GetAssemblyName('System.Data.SQLite.dll').FullName
System.Data.SQLite, Version=1.0.66.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=db937bc2d44ff139
PS C:\PATH_TO_ASSEMBLY>

This does the trick mentioned in other answers by using code, except you don't have to create a project to do this - just type away at the prompt ;)

Thanks! Ended using the C# version of this `AssemblyName.GetAssemblyName(assemblyPath).FullName` — SuperOli, Dec 17 '13 at 17:56
And a suggestion is to use the full path to the assembly name and not just the assembly name. FWIW, it doesn't work if you give that way and even if you are in the same directory as the assembly. — Soundararajan, Oct 19 '19 at 07:58

score 9 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 18 '09 at 14:27

Use Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly() to get the current assembly, use Assembly.GetEntryAssembly() to get the assembly that started it all, or use Assembly.GetCallingAssembly() to get the assembly of the code that called your function (one up in the stack).

Once you have the right assembly, use the FullName property, as indicated in other answers.

score 6 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 16 '11 at 16:20

Also if you're looking for the Fully Qualified Name for an assembly already in the GAC you can launch a Visual Studio Command Prompt (easiest way to set the correct paths) and use gacutil /l to list all assemblies with their respective FQNs. Use gacutil /l <yourassemblyname> to filter the list to more easily find what you're looking for.

score 5 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 27 '12 at 09:52

5

You can also use open source ILSpy, after you load your assembly it's full name will be diplayed in comments at the top of code window

answered Aug 27 '12 at 09:52

csharpfolk

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score 5 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 18 '09 at 14:25

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If you load the assembly (DLL, EXE, etc.) in Reflector it will tell you the full strong name at the bottom.

answered Mar 18 '09 at 14:25

Richard Slater

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This answer is out of line, he was not asking for a $118 plug-in to find this out. – md1337 May 17 '13 at 16:02
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At the time this was posted Reflector was free. – Richard Slater May 24 '13 at 20:31
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ILSpy is a free alternative for Reflector which can be used to find the fully qualified name of an assembly. – Jaanus Varus May 27 '13 at 08:01
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Old .Net Reflector 6.8.2.5 is free and it is working. – Maxim Jun 19 '14 at 00:19
Nowadays [dotPeek](https://www.jetbrains.com/decompiler/) (by JetBrains) is the best free alternative for this purpose. – AlexMelw Aug 05 '17 at 13:10
dotPeek does NOT display the full name, or even the public key. – Chris Bordeman Nov 08 '17 at 18:21

score 4 · Answer 8 · answered Mar 14 '13 at 15:27

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JetBrains dotPeek or Telerik JustDecompile are quite good. Just open the DLL and you have the name right away.

answered Mar 14 '13 at 15:27

uli78

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score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 24 '19 at 16:31

Being old-school and liking cmd better than powershell, I wrote myself this batch script to do it:

@REM fqn.bat <dll_path>
powershell -command "([system.reflection.assembly]::loadfile('%~f1')).FullName"

The %~f1 expands the first parameter to be an absolute path, so running:

fqn mydll.dll

Will print the fully-qualified name you want.

score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Mar 18 '09 at 14:26

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Couple ways.

In code:

Assembly.FullName e.g.

typeof(Thingy).Assembly.FullName

or, if its an installed assembly, from the GAC using the steps in this post on msdn.

answered Mar 18 '09 at 14:26

joshua.ewer

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How do I find the fully qualified name of an assembly?

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