How to programmatically generate C# files from a DLL or EXE

   I’m working on a project that involves researching and comparing many versions of the same DLL.   I don’t have the source for every version of this DLL so I needed a way to convert it to C# files and diff those.  Since there are thousands of versions of this file out there I needed to be able to generate the C# files programmatically.

I started with Reflector, but it doesn’t have a simple API needed to generate the files programmatically.

I came across JustDecompile from Telerik and found that they do have a command line API that works great.  I could have just invoked the EXE with Process.Start, but I figured I should see how they are doing and see if I could do everything inproc. So I decompiled the JustDecompile.exe file and found a very simple DLL method that they use to output C# files.
 

1) Download JustDecompile

2) Open up your project and Add References to these two DLLs.

    C:\Program Files (x86)\Telerik\JustDecompile\Libraries\JustDecompile.Tools.MSBuildProjectBuilder.dll

    C:\Program Files (x86)\Telerik\JustDecompile\Libraries\JustDecompiler.dll

3) Add these namespaces:

    using JustDecompile.Tools.MSBuildProjectBuilder;
    using Telerik.JustDecompiler.Languages.CSharp;
    using System.Threading;

4) Add this code to your project where you want to programmatically decompile code

 

MSBuildProjectBuilder projectBuilder = new MSBuildProjectBuilder(dll, outfolder, new CSharpV4());
projectBuilder.ProjectFileCreated += new EventHandler<ProjectFileCreatedEvent>(projectBuilder_ProjectFileCreated);
projectBuilder.BuildProject(new CancellationToken());

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