I previously wrote about COM Interop with .NET Core 1.0 and .NET Core 2.0. I haven’t had a chance to write it about it since, so this discusses both .NET Core 3.x and .NET 5.0. If it wasn’t obvious from the previous articles, this is about calling COM components from .NET. I believe work was done using COM interop in the other direction (calling .NET from COM components), but it is not discussed here. If you need to call .NET from Visual FoxPro, wwDotNetBridge is much simpler than standard COM Interop and highly recommended.
.NET Core 3.x
.NET Core 3.0 was a big release. Unlike ASP.NET Core 2.0, ASP.NET Core 3.0 removed the option to run on .NET Full Framework 4.x. It only runs on .NET Core, meaning you can no longer fall back to 4.x for COM Interop support. WinForms and WPF desktop applications were also brought into the Core fold for the first time, and some of those apps might rely on COM Interop.
Some progress was made in 3.0, but the overall COM Interop story is the same as .NET Core 2.0. That is, COM Interop works, but late binding using the C# dynamic keyword still doesn’t function.
dynamic excel = Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetTypeFromProgID("Excel.Application", true));
excel.Visible = true;
Console.WriteLine("Press Enter to close Excel.");
Console.ReadLine();
excel.Quit();
As with .NET Core 2.0, the above code will function in .NET Framework 4.x, but in .NET Core 3.x, an exception occurs:
‘System.__ComObject’ does not contain a definition for ‘Visible’
Microsoft had planned to bring full support for the dynamic keyword to .NET Core 3.0, but the job proved to be too large, so it was deferred. However, there are a couple of improvements.
In .NET Core 2.0, you had to jump through hoops to create an interop assembly for COM components. In .NET 3.x projects with Visual Studio 2019, you can simply right-click on the project and select “Add COM Reference”.
In addition, some folks put together a workaround using a DynamicObject wrapper to access properties/methods on COM objects using the dynamic keyword, so you don’t have to use ugly reflection calls. This may not work in every scenario, but you may find it meets your needs on .NET Core 3.x.
.NET 5.0
.NET 5.0 was just launched at .NET Conf on November 10, 2020. It represents the reunification of .NET Core and .NET Full Framework, hence the dropping of “Core” in the product name. .NET 4.x remains a part of Windows and will continue to be supported indefinitely. Some things are not coming over to .NET 5, such as Web Forms, WCF, and WWF… at least not by Microsoft. There are open-source projects to port WCF and WWF. But what about COM Interop? In my testing, it just works. Indeed, Microsoft finished the work to support using the dynamic keyword with COM objects. There’s not much more to say than that. If incomplete COM Interop support has been keeping you on .NET Full Framework 4.x, now may be the time to take a look at .NET 5.0.