How to create a new object instance from a Type

One may not always know the Type of an object at compile-time, but may need to create an instance of the Type.

How do you get a new object instance from a Type?

The Activator class within the root System namespace is pretty powerful.

There are a lot of overloads for passing parameters to the constructor and such. Check out the documentation at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.activator.createinstance.aspx

or (new path)

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.activator.createinstance

Here are some simple examples:

ObjectType instance = (ObjectType)Activator.CreateInstance(objectType);

ObjectType instance = (ObjectType)Activator.CreateInstance("MyAssembly","MyNamespace.ObjectType");

ObjectType instance = (ObjectType)Activator.CreateInstance(objectType);

The Activator class has a generic variant that makes this a bit easier:

ObjectType instance = Activator.CreateInstance<ObjectType>();