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Assembly.GetCallingAssembly Method

.NET Framework 3.0
Returns the Assembly of the method that invoked the currently executing method.

Namespace: System.Reflection
Assembly: mscorlib (in mscorlib.dll)

C#
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public static Assembly GetCallingAssembly ()
J#
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public static Assembly GetCallingAssembly ()
JScript
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public static function GetCallingAssembly () : Assembly
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Not applicable.

Return Value

The Assembly object of the method that invoked the currently executing method.

If the method that calls the GetCallingAssembly method is expanded inline by the compiler (that is, if the compiler inserts the function body into the emitted Microsoft intermediate language (MSIL), rather than emitting a function call), then the assembly returned by the GetCallingAssembly method is the assembly containing the inline code. This might be different from the assembly that contains the original method. To ensure that a method that calls the GetCallingAssembly method is not inlined by the compiler, you can apply the MethodImplAttribute attribute with MethodImplOptions.NoInlining.

The following example gets the calling assembly of the current method.

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Assembly SampleAssembly;
// Instantiate a target object.
Int32 Integer1 = new Int32();
Type Type1;
// Set the Type instance to the target class type.
Type1 = Integer1.GetType();
// Instantiate an Assembly class to the assembly housing the Integer type.  
SampleAssembly = Assembly.GetAssembly(Integer1.GetType());
// Display the name of the assembly that is calling the method.
Console.WriteLine("GetCallingAssembly=" + Assembly.GetCallingAssembly().FullName);

Windows 98, Windows Server 2000 SP4, Windows CE, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows Mobile for Pocket PC, Windows Mobile for Smartphone, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP Starter Edition

The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 is supported on Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows XP SP2, and Windows Server 2003 SP1.

.NET Framework

Supported in: 3.0, 2.0, 1.1, 1.0

.NET Compact Framework

Supported in: 2.0, 1.0

XNA Framework

Supported in: 1.0
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The caller may not be who you were expecting...

The common case is for the caller to have directly called currently executing method. However, the caller may have invoked the currently executing method via a delegate, or in a late-bound way using MethodBase.Invoke. The delegate or the MethodInfo might have been created by one assembly, and then another assembly could have invoked it. GetCallingAssembly will not indicate who created the delegate or the MethodInfo. So if you use GetCallingAssembly to make security decisions, you will need to be extremely careful to ensure that you handle the cases of late-bound invocation.

Another unusual case is if the caller is a DynamicMethod. Since DynamicMethods can potentially be associated with arbitrary assemblies during creating, GetCallingAssembly will return the associated assembly.

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