You can automate .NET Reflector processes, and run .NET Reflector from within IDEs or other applications. You can even use it as a web control within a browser! . Here Nick shows how to develop a web control that accepts metadata for a method, uses .NET Reflector to disassemble the method and displays the decompiled output in a web page.
We all love .NET Reflector. Wouldn’t it be nice to harness some of this power in our own applications?
One of the greatest things about .NET Reflector is the ability to write your own addins. .NET Reflector provides all the hooks needed for you to create your own code extending .NET Reflector in some amazing ways, and many talented folks have contributed some wonderful addins. Turns out, we can use these same hooks to drive .NET Reflector from our own applications!
This sounds very exciting! But what can we actually do with it? Here are a few thoughts:
* We have a safe place where we have complete control to explore building our own add-in
* We can build a command line utility to automate specific tasks like running metrics as part of a daily build
* We can provide a subset of .NET Reflector’s functionality from within our own apps limiting what is visible
* We can build a web control that will allow us to view the disassembled source code from a given assembly.
This article will explore this last idea. Here we will step through creating such a web control.
