Cal Jacobson's Blog

Recently I’ve considered building a plug-in supported application for my own personal use and amusement. I had designed a simple one years ago, in VB.NET and was curious to see what (if anything) was available on the Net in terms of tutorials or pointers for building a more sophisticated one in C#. What follows is a list of links to articles and forum postings that I found which may prove to be useful.

• Task Plug-in: A Flexible .NET Plug-in Architecture by Joseph Guadagno. June 12, 2007. www.codeproject.com/cs/library/TaskPlugin.asp .
• Generic Plug-in application in C# by Mads Kristensen.  February 26, 2007.  http://blog.madskristensen.dk/post/Generic-plug-in-application-in-C.aspx.
• Use C# and the .NET Framework to develop your own plugin architecture by Zach Smith. November 28, 2006. articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-3513-6138904.html.
• Enabling Your Application to Become a Plugin Host by Mike Pagel. June 4, 2006. www.codeproject.com/useritems/Plugin_Basics.asp .
• Building Plugins with C# by Nathan Good. August 27, 2004. www.awprofessional.com/articles/printerfriendly.asp?p=332874 . Note: Link is to printer-friendly version of Part 1 of 4; links to other parts are available on the page.
• Plug-ins in C# by Jon Dick. March 5, 2004. www.codeproject.com/csharp/pluginsincsharp.asp .
• Plug-in Framework (Part 1): Making Types for Consumption by Justin Rogers. January 21, 2004. weblogs.asp.net/justin_rogers/pages/61042.aspx .
• Search Dynamically for Plug-Ins by Roy Osherove. December 2003. msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972968.aspx .
• Creating a Plug-In Framework by Roy Osherove. December 2003. msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972962.aspx .
• Let Users Add Functionality to Your .NET Applications with Macros and Plug-Ins by Jason Clark. MSDN Magazine, October 2003. msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/03/10/Plug-Ins/default.aspx .
• Plugin Architecture using C# by Shoki. August 4, 2003. www.codeproject.com/csharp/c__plugin_architecture.asp.
• Add run-time functionality to your application by providing a plug-in mechanism by Roy Osherove. May 27, 2003. www.codeproject.com/csharp/plugins.asp.
• Implementing a Plug-In Architecture in C# by Shawn Walcheske. April 16, 2003. www.ddj.com/article/printableArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=Z5UK0KT0RDRQAQSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=184403942&dept_url=/dept/cpp/ . Note: Link is to printer-friendly version.
• Writing plugin-based applications with .NET by divil. December 8, 2002. www.xtremedotnettalk.com/showthread.php?t=49597 .

Updated July 27th: Added Mads Kristensen’s article, which somehow didn’t make it on the original list but certainly belongs there.  Additionally, Shaun Hayward’s Toronto Code Camp 2007 presentation, Building Plug-ins and Inspecting Classes With Reflection, is certainly worth a look.