What is strong name?

Basically strong name is a container which consists of assembly’s informations. For example it contains, name of the assembly, culture informations, version number, public key, digital signature. It can be generated by using developer tools like visual studio command prompt from an assembly file.

The strong names are unique( And yeah it must be). By creating an assembly with strong names you can make sure that the name is globally unique. You can find some more informations about strong names here.

If you need to find the public key of a DLL, you can see here: How to find PublicKeyToken of a DLL

Steps to create strong names

Step 1: Opening visual studio command prompt

To open a command prompt, you can either go to short cuts from the directory as

[html]
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\Tools\Shortcuts
[/html]

Or you can go to start->Type Visual Studio-> You can find Visual Studio Tools folder.

Create_Strong_Name_Key_File_-_Start

Step 2: Run Command Prompt

Just click on the command prompt and run as administrator.

Create_Strong_Name_Key_File_Tools

Step 3: Creating .snk file

To create a strong name, you need to run the below command in the command prompt.

[html]
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\SDK\v3.5\Bin>sn -k "c:\stron
g.snk
[/html]

Here, the visual studio and framework versions will be changed as your version. And the stron name strong.snk will be created in the C drive root directory.

Once you run that command, you can see an output as follows.

[html]
Microsoft (R) .NET Framework Strong Name Utility Version 4.0.30319.33440
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Key pair written to c:\strong.snk
[/html]

Create_Strong_Name

Conclusion

Did I miss anything that you may think which is needed? Could you find this post as useful? I hope you liked this article. Please share me your valuable suggestions and feedback.

Your turn. What do you think?

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Kindest Regards
Sibeesh Venu

In this article we will learn how we can find out the public key token of a DLL that we add as a reference in our project . I hope you will like it.

Background

Today I was trying to find out a public key of a dll that I added to my MVC project. I came to know that we can find out this by using our visual studio itself. Here by I am sharing you that information. I am using Visual Studio 2012.

Using the code

To find out the DLL information, you need to run your project, since this process will work only in debug mode. you need to put a break point somewhere in your cs page.

And when the break hits, you need to go to the immediate window by pressing Alt+Ctrl+I .

Now a window will be opening, there you need to type
[csharp]
?System.Reflection.Assembly.LoadFile(@"C:\SVenu\TestApp\TestApp\bin\CellSetGrid2.dll").FullName
[/csharp]

Then you can see output in the immediate window as follows.

If you are not in debug mode or you are in design mode, you will get a warning as follows.

“The expression cannot be evaluated while in design mode.”

You can always check the entire details of DLL by giving the following command.

[csharp]
?System.Reflection.Assembly.LoadFile(@"C:\SVenu\TestApp\TestApp\bin\CellSetGrid2.dll")
[/csharp]

Then you can see output in the immediate window as follows.

Please be noted that the output given here will be different according to your DLL

Conclusion

That is all. I hope you liked this article. Please share me your feedback.

Kindest Regards
Sibeesh Venu