How can I get System.Type from "System.Drawing.Color" string

Question

I have an xml stored property of some control

<Prop Name="ForeColor" Type="System.Drawing.Color" Value="-16777216" />

I want to convert it back as others

System.Type type = System.Type.GetType(propertyTypeString);
object propertyObj = 
  TypeDescriptor.GetConverter(type).ConvertFromString(propertyValueString);

System.Type.GetType("System.Drawing.Color") returns null.

The question is how one can correctly get color type from string

(it will be better not to do a special case just for Color properties)

Update

from time to time this xml will be edited by hand

Answer 1

Do you have the System.Drawing assembly loaded? Do you have a reference to it?

Answer 2

You need to specify the assembly as well as the type name when using Type.GetType(), unless the type is in mscorlib or the currently executing assembly.

If you know it's in the System.Drawing assembly, you can use Assembly.GetType() instead - or perhaps look in a whole list of possible assemblies:

Type type = candidateAssemblies.Select(assembly => assembly.GetType(typeName))
                               .Where(type => type != null)
                               .FirstOrDefault();

if (type != null)
{
    // Use it
}
else
{
    // Couldn't find the right type
}

Answer 3

Are you storing these properties in XML yourself? If so, just write the object's AssemblyQualifiedName instead of just FullName when you create the node. That gives the assembly context information required to load the type from a string using Type.GetType()

Answer 4

Maybe thats not exactly relevant to your problem, but I had a similar one. I needed to serialize/deserialize Color using XmlSerializer. After searching the Internets and combining the wisdom of several authors I came up with the wrapper class:

/// <summary>
/// Color that can be xml-serialized
/// </summary>
public class SerializableColor
{
    public int A { get; set; }
    public int R { get; set; }
    public int G { get; set; }
    public int B { get; set; }
    public int KnownColor { get; set; }

    /// <summary>
    /// Intended for xml serialization purposes only
    /// </summary>
    private SerializableColor() { }

    public SerializableColor(Color color)
    {
        this.A = color.A;
        this.R = color.R;
        this.G = color.G;
        this.B = color.B;
        this.KnownColor = (int)color.ToKnownColor();
    }

    public static SerializableColor FromColor(Color color)
    {
        return new SerializableColor(color);
    }

    public Color ToColor()
    {
        if (KnownColor != 0)
        {
            return Color.FromKnownColor((KnownColor)KnownColor);
        }
        else
        {
            return Color.FromArgb(A, R, G, B);
        }
    }
}

Maybe it can be applied to your situation. You see, Color class sometimes store itself not as a combination of ARGB values, but as a KnownColor enum value... that needs to be preserved during the serialization.