How to import a .DLL at runtime?

• magicman

  Thanks for all your help guys, but I think I'm just gonna pay for more bandwidth and forget moduralizing my code into DLLs!
  
  
  

• Nick Rawe

  Any DLL you make in VB.NET or any other .NET language is a managed one.
  
  

• Juerg

  I've come up with this same problem again in a different context:

  I'm now making an apple-dashboard style widgets program for windows using VB. The widgets are saved as DLLs, and the user must be able to import new ones at runtime. I've worked out how the DLLs and the widgets software would work, but how do I make an instance of a class stored in a DLL, at runtime

  
  
  

• WiKoPL

  If your writing code that is using the functionality - is there any reason why you cant simply add the reference to your code at design time

  
  

• JGrove805

  I found an answer here:

  http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx PostID=950987&SiteID=1

  
  
  

• Jeff Waz

  Well you see I am making an MMORPG that will need to automatically update itself on the client's computer. To save bandwith, I am moduralizing the graphics library, etc. onto DLL files, so that they are only re-downloaded when they have been updated.
  
  Therefore, if I were to import the library at design time, then modify it later on, would the application still function, ot would I need to import it at run-time
  
  
  

• AndrewMurdock

  Do you mean a managed or unmanaged dll

  If a managed one you can simply load the Assembly with one of the many load functions provided by the assembly class.

  If on the other hand you mean an unmanaged dll this gets a little tricky as you would need to know the name of the dll, the name of the function(s) you want to call and their complete signatures at compile time for a proper P/Invoke... otherwise you are more or less out of luck.

  
  
  

• Mian Fahim ul Haq

  Well I think I found what you're looking for at suppor.microsoft

  How to call a managed DLL from native Visual C++ code in Visual Studio.NET or in Visual Studio 2005

  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/828736/en-us

  I think you dont need to register the dll since both client and dll are managed. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

  Regards.

  
  

• isaacc

  You don't register it with regsrvr32. If you want a DLL of managed code to be COM visible then you would use regasm to register and make a type liberary. From there VB6 can excute .Net Code.

  
  
  

• DadoToday

  I'm not sure if the DLL is managed or unmanaged. Is a DLL that I make using VB.NET 2005 Managed or Unmanaged
  
  
  

• RRRSr

  Thanks. How do I load the DLL at runtime then, given the path, and given that it is managed
  
  Please note that I am quite the noob at VB.Net so make the code easy!
  
  
  
• How to import a .DLL at runtime?