Complicated API issue with calling assemblies dynamically?
- by Stefanos Tses
I have an interesting challenge that I'm wondering if anyone here can give me some direction.
I'm writing a .Net windows forms application that runs on a network and uses an SQL Server to save and pull data.
I want to offer a mini "plugin" API, where developers can build their own assemblies and implement a specific interface (IDataManipulate). These assemblies then can be used by my application to call the interface functions and do something.
I can create assemblies using my API, copy the file to a folder in my local hard drive and configure my application to use Reflection to call a specific function from the implemented interface (IDataManipulate.Execute).
The problem:
Since the application will be installed in multiple workstations in the network, is impossible to copy the plugin dlls the users will create to each machine.
Solutions I tried:
Solution 1
Copy the API dll to a network share.
Problem:
Requires AllowPartiallyTrustedCallersAttribute, which requires .Net singing, which I can't force from my users.
Solution 2 (preferred)
Serialize the dll object, save it to the database, deserialize it and call IDataManipulate.Execute.
Problem:
After deserialization, I try cast it to a IDataManipulate object but returns an error looking for the actual dll file.
Solution 3
Save the dll bytes as byte[] to the database and recreate the dll at the local PC every time the user starts my application.
Problem:
Dll may have dependencies, which I don't know if I can detect.
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
