Purpose of Activator.CreateInstance with example?

Say you have a class called MyFancyObject like this one below:

class MyFancyObject
{
 public int A { get;set;}
}

It lets you turn:

String ClassName = "MyFancyObject";

Into

MyFancyObject obj;

Using

obj = (MyFancyObject)Activator.CreateInstance("MyAssembly", ClassName))

and can then do stuff like:

obj.A = 100;

That's its purpose. It also has many other overloads such as providing a Type instead of the class name in a string. Why you would have a problem like that is a different story. Here's some people who needed it:

• Createinstance() - Am I doing this right?
• C# Using Activator.CreateInstance
• Creating an object without knowing the class name at design time

You can also do this -

var handle = Activator.CreateInstance("AssemblyName", 
                "Full name of the class including the namespace and class name");
var obj = handle.Unwrap();

Well i can give you an example why to use something like that. Think of a game where you want to store your level and enemies in an XML file. When you parse this file, you might have an element like this.

<Enemy X="10" Y="100" Type="MyGame.OrcGuard"/>

what you can do now is, create dynamically the objects found in your level file.

foreach(XmlNode node in doc)
   var enemy = Activator.CreateInstance(null, node.Attributes["Type"]);

This is very useful, for building dynamic enviroments. Of course its also possible to use this for Plugin or addin scenarios and alot more.

My good friend MSDN can explain it to you, with an example

Here is the code in case the link or content changes in the future:

using System;

class DynamicInstanceList
{
    private static string instanceSpec = "System.EventArgs;System.Random;" +
        "System.Exception;System.Object;System.Version";

    public static void Main()
    {
        string[] instances = instanceSpec.Split(';');
        Array instlist = Array.CreateInstance(typeof(object), instances.Length);
        object item;
        for (int i = 0; i < instances.Length; i++)
        {
            // create the object from the specification string
            Console.WriteLine("Creating instance of: {0}", instances[i]);
            item = Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(instances[i]));
            instlist.SetValue(item, i);
        }
        Console.WriteLine("\nObjects and their default values:\n");
        foreach (object o in instlist)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Type:     {0}\nValue:    {1}\nHashCode: {2}\n",
                o.GetType().FullName, o.ToString(), o.GetHashCode());
        }
    }
}

// This program will display output similar to the following: 
// 
// Creating instance of: System.EventArgs 
// Creating instance of: System.Random 
// Creating instance of: System.Exception 
// Creating instance of: System.Object 
// Creating instance of: System.Version 
// 
// Objects and their default values: 
// 
// Type:     System.EventArgs 
// Value:    System.EventArgs 
// HashCode: 46104728 
// 
// Type:     System.Random 
// Value:    System.Random 
// HashCode: 12289376 
// 
// Type:     System.Exception 
// Value:    System.Exception: Exception of type 'System.Exception' was thrown. 
// HashCode: 55530882 
// 
// Type:     System.Object 
// Value:    System.Object 
// HashCode: 30015890 
// 
// Type:     System.Version 
// Value:    0.0 
// HashCode: 1048575