Angular 2 - Resolve Component Factory with a string

Question

This is for the 2.1.0 Final release versions of Angular.

I'm trying to dynamically instantiate a component who's type is passed from a config JSON file. The best thing I can find is ComponentFactoryResolver, however all usages that I have found save one seem to be passing actual Type objects to the resolver.

Is there a way to get the Type from a string? Because presently, passing the type as a string gives me the error:

No component factory found for MyComponent

Relevant code:

StructureBuilder component:

private renderComponent(config:any) {
    let configComponents = config.components;
    if(config.hasOwnProperty('components') && configComponents.length){
        for(let i = 0, len = configComponents.length; i < len; i++){
            this.componentResolver.resolveComponentFactory(configComponents[i]);
        }
    }
}

where config.components is an array of strings that use the Type as a value.

And in the module definition (Structure.module.ts)

@NgModule({
    declarations: [
        MyComponent,
        StructureBuilder_Cmp
    ],
    entryComponents: [
        MyComponent
    ]
    //Etc...
});

As far as can tell with the sparse docs, this is exactly how you're supposed to do it.

If I change the dynamic string passed in from configComponents[i] to the actual imported type reference for MyComponent, it works.

So basically, the question is: Is there a way to use resolveComponentFactory with strings to resolve a component, and if not, is there way to get a Type reference from a string value?

Answer 1

My solution for now is to do what I really wanted to avoid, which is maintaining a key/val registry.

let componentRegistry = {
    'SomeComp1': SomeComp1, 
    'SomeComp2': SomeComp2
}

And then call it with:

private renderComponent(config:any) {
    let configComponents = config.components;
    if(config.hasOwnProperty('components') && configComponents.length){
        for(let i = 0, len = configComponents.length; i < len; i++){
            let comp = configComponents[i];
            this.componentResolver.resolveComponentFactory(this.componentRegistry[comp]);
        }
    }
}