Programatically get a Type's Alias in .NET

Question

Is it possible to determine an object type's alias(es) through reflection? Given the following example where myObject is of type System.Int32 -- e.g

Type t = myObject.GetType();

t.Name will be Int32. However, I would like to identify the possibile alias(es), if any, of the objects in question, so that I could resolve the type name of int in addition to Int32

I'm not looking to spend a huge amount of time on this. If there isn't an extreamely simple, built in solution, I'll just map the values myself. =)

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Not directly with reflection, there is not. The "type name" (as you are calling it) "int" is not a type name at all, but a language keyword.

You could, of course, use a dictionary to store the look ups from type names to the shorter convenience forms. But there is nothing in the reflection API's that will do that for you.

Answer 2

The aliases appear to be compile-time only. Notice how they don't apply outside of a given source file. They are simply conveniences, nothing more.

Answer 3

You can get language specific type alias by using CodeDom classes

    var cs = new CSharpCodeProvider();
    var vb = new VBCodeProvider();

    var type = typeof (int);
    Console.WriteLine("Type Name: {0}", type.Name); // Int32
    Console.WriteLine("C# Type Name: {0}", cs.GetTypeOutput(new CodeTypeReference(type))); // int
    Console.WriteLine("VB Type Name: {0}", vb.GetTypeOutput(new CodeTypeReference(type))); // Integer