.NET Reflector meets the CodeDom.NET Reflector was the first .NET tool to allow assemblies to be disassembled back into the high level language that produced them. Moreover, it has a plug-in architecture that allows you to disassemble to any language for which you have a plug-in, or are prepared to write one. Nick Harrison takes it one further step, and creates a plug-in that produces the CodeDom code needed to create the contents of the assembly. Nick explains, gently. ( 02 Oct 2009 ) by Nick Harrison

'Methodist': Make .NET Reflector come alive with IronPythonIt is great to be able to inspect the contents of an assembly with .NET Reflector, but to really understand the behaviour of code, it is nice to be able to call methods and see the results immediately within .NET Reflector. Now you can, thanks to the magic of IronPython and the DLR. Ben builds a REPL add-in for .NET Reflector and makes a great tool even more useful. ( 21 May 2009 ) by Ben Hall

'Peli' de Halleux: Geek of the WeekIt is extraordinary how much 'Peli' has achieved in a short space of time. Here, our choice for Geek of the Week, 'Peli' de Halleux, talks about his contributions to MbUnit, .NET Reflector, QuickGraph and Pex. ( 21 Oct 2008 ) by Richard Morris

.NET Reflector FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)Bart tackles all the commonly asked questions about .NET Reflector. Each answer is done as a separate blog post so that your comments, contributions and or supplementary questions can be put as comments to the various blog posts. ( 13 Aug 2009 ) by Bart Read

.NET Reflector Pro to the rescueAlmost all applications have to interface with components or modules written by somebody else, for which you don't have the source code. This is fine until things go wrong, but when you need to refactor your code and you keep getting strange exceptions, you'll start to wish you could place breakpoints in someone else's code and step through it. Now, of course, you can, as Geoffrey Braaf discovered. ( 19 Apr 2010 ) by Geoffrey Braaf

.NET Reflector Saved their Bacon: Chris Kapilla's Story.NET Reflector is not just a handy adjunct to Visual Studio for developers to browse their assemblies and understand classes and methods; Sometimes it can have a vital role. Many developers have told us that, occasionally, it had 'saved their bacon'. We were intrigued and decided to find out more by offering prizes and cash for ".NET Reflector Saved My Bacon" stories. ( 24 Feb 2009 ) by Bob Cramblitt

.NET Reflector Saved their Bacon: The Gremlins strike backQuite often, .NET Reflector is downloaded in an emergency. Whereas most of the users are developers who use it as a routine to explore objects and methods inside Assemblies, the occasional user is getting it because they are in desperate straits. We've always felt that we, and other NET Reflector users, would like to hear more about these real-life emergencies, so we sent Richard Morris to investigate. ( 24 Apr 2009 ) by Richard Morris

.NET Reflector Through the Looking Glass: The Cheese CoursePart 4 describes how you can extend reflector further by describing how reflector can be used to compare or manage assemblies and exercise the code in front of you or even any arbitrary code on the fly. ( 21 Jan 2013 ) by Michael Sorens

.NET Reflector Through the Looking Glass: The Hors d'OeuvresAlmost everywhere that .NET applications are developed, there is .NET Reflector. Although there have been some blogs on how to use it, there has never been a documentation. Michael Sorens puts the matter right! ( 14 Jan 2013 ) by Michael Sorens

.NET Reflector Through the Looking Glass: The Meat and Potatoes.NET Reflector is most often used for viewing, filtering, navigating, and debugging assemblies to understand it better. Here is how all that is done. ( 15 Jan 2013 ) by Michael Sorens

.NET Reflector Through the Looking Glass: The PuddingThere a number of ways in which Reflector, either by itself or with an Addin, allows you to analyse and explore assemblies, or even change the disassembly language ( 18 Jan 2013 ) by Michael Sorens

.NET Reflector: Soup to Nuts.NET Reflector is almost an intrinsic part of the .NET Framework, a free tool for browsing the contents of a .NET assembly. When Lutz Roeder passed responsibility for development of the code to Red Gate, the team preserved the characteristic minimal look, focussing on updates and code improvements. Then they added a free add-in that allowed it to be accessed from within Visual Studio. Reflector Pro is a paid-for extension that allows Visual Studio users to debug code in .NET Reflector. ( 22 Oct 2008 ) by Andrew Clarke

.net SmokeTest for ReflectorWith .net SmokeTest, you can take any assembly, construct an instance, call a method, set a property or field of any class Type from a dialog: Then drill-down into the result without ever writing a single line code. ( 22 Jan 2013 ) by Wesley Steiner

{smartassembly} software for code obfuscation {smartassembly} is a tool for ensuring that the source code your commercial .NET application isn't visible to anyone with .NET Reflector. Matteo, who writes for us about encryption in .NET, asked if he could write a review of {smartassembly} for Simple-Talk. Because we like the product too, and Red Gate Software had recently taken over the product, we were happy to agree. ( 28 Jan 2010 ) by Matteo Slaviero

Annotating Code with .NET Reflector and Review Add-InBen Hall takes a look at a simple add-in to .NET Reflector that helps team development work in a number of ways, and show how useful it can be in understanding how an API to a third-party assembly works. ( 27 Jan 2009 ) by Ben Hall

Behind the scenes with the developers of .NET Reflector 6 and .NET Reflector ProLutz Roeder handed over responsibility for development of .NET Reflector to Red Gate nearly eighteen months ago. "What's been happening since then?", one might ask. The answer is "Rather a lot," as we found out when we sent Bob Cramblitt to the .NET team, also known as the "Managed Heap," to find out. ( 12 Feb 2010 ) by Bob Cramblitt

C# Async: What is it, and how does it work?The biggest new feature in C#5 is Async, and its associated Await (contextual) keyword. Anybody who is faced with creating Metro applications for Windows 8 is having to tackle the very different mindset of Async Programming. Clive explains what is happening under the covers and how one can investigate, using .NET Reflector. ( 15 May 2012 ) by Clive Tong

Embedding IronRuby and the DLR into SQL Data GeneratorYou can embed DLR-based languages such as IronPython and IronRuby into applications. This gives you instant scripting, and with it, the potential for greatly simplifying the development process. You can even take advantage of existing applications that have a plug-in architecture, such as SQL Data Generator and NET Reflector. Be Hall takes SQL Data Generator and shows how this technique allows you to create simple generators specifically for your needs. ( 23 Apr 2009 ) by Ben Hall

Encouraging .NET Reflector Add-insJason Haley is well-known for the resources he's provided to developers who wish to extend Reflector's usefulness by writing Add-ins, so we decided to sit him down for a chat. ( 19 Nov 2008 ) by Chris Massey

First Steps with .NET ReflectorIf you are new to using .NET Reflector, or you are wondering whether it would be useful to you, you'll appreciate Jason Crease's quick run through of the basic functionality. This is also available as a video. ( 17 Nov 2008 ) by Jason Crease

Has .NET Reflector Saved Your Bacon?We think Reflector is a fantastic tool, and we know you do too. We'd love to hear about the times you've used it to save the day. What were you working on? What happened? Send us your epic tales of .NET Heroism... ( 28 Jan 2009 ) by Chris Massey

Hosting .NET Reflector in your own ApplicationYou can automate .NET Reflector processes, and run .NET Reflector from within IDEs or other applications. You can even use it as a web control within a browser! . Here Nick shows how to develop a web control that accepts metadata for a method, uses .NET Reflector to disassemble the method and displays the decompiled output in a web page. ( 22 Mar 2009 ) by Nick Harrison

Metric-Driven Refactoring with .NET ReflectorSoftware Metrics are a great way of suggesting those parts of your code that may need refactoring, if they are treated purely as an aid to judgement. Nick Harrison shows how metrics can be done simply with NET Reflector and Peli's CodeMetrics Addin, and explains some details of the Smelly Metrics that are often used. ( 27 Jan 2009 ) by Nick Harrison

Prototyping Desktop DeblectorDeblector is an open-source debugging add-in for .NET Reflector; the Reflector team investigated whether they could integrate it into Reflector's desktop application, and updated the source code to introduce compatibilty with the latest version of Reflector before releasing it back into codeplex ( 28 Jan 2013 ) by Rob Clarke

Reflector Pro ComethReflector 6 is here. Nick Harrison is a long-time Reflector enthusiast, and has been responsible for writing an add-in. As he'd helped test the new version, Nick asked to review it for Simple-Talk. The team were anxious to know what he thought. They needn't have worried. ( 25 Feb 2010 ) by Nick Harrison

Reflectoron in Prism: a WPF MVVM tutorialWhen Eli was writing a WPF MVVM tutorial, he decided to use .NET Reflector as his sample, and created a WPF UI for .NET Reflector using its public interface, mimicking the original. A WPF/Prism version of Reflector? Eli explains what he did, and supplies the complete project and source to Reflectoron ( 14 Jul 2010 ) by Eli Arbel

Revisiting Hosting ReflectorYou can automate .NET Reflector processes, and run .NET Reflector from within a .NET application, from within ASP.NET or even within ASP.NET MVC. What is more you can host a reflector Add-in. This opens up many possibilities as Nick Harrison points out. ( 23 Feb 2012 ) by Nick Harrison

The Future of Reflector Simple Talk asked freelance writer Bob Cramblitt to sit down with the two people behind the agreement that Red Gate will be responsible for the future development of .NET Reflector, and discuss with them what it means to the community and the future of Reflector. ( 20 Aug 2008 ) by Bob Cramblitt

Understanding Asynchronous Programming with .NET ReflectorWhen you are working with the .NET framework, it is great to be able to view, and step into, assemblies. The documentation is handy to have, but nothing beats being able to see and debug the code to understand how it works. Suddenly, the new Async features stop being mystical, and start to make practical sense. ( 24 Sep 2012 ) by Nick Harrison

Using .NET Reflector Add-ins.NET Reflector by itself is great, but it really comes into its own with the help of some add-ins. Here we provide you with an introduction to the Add-ins, explain briefly what they do, and encourage you to write your own in order to get .NET Reflector to work the way you want it to! ( 19 Nov 2008 ) by Andrew Clarke

Using .NET Reflector to Manage Complex Software DependenciesTom Carter's Dependency Structure Matrix Plugin for .NET Reflector turns the tool into a means of tracking inter-module dependencies in .NET. Why is this such a powerful way of keeping the complexity of an application in check? How can you benefit from being able to track dependencies between objects? Nick Harrison provides a simple explanation. ( 23 Feb 2009 ) by Nick Harrison