Setting Up These Types While Keeping It Properly Structured - vb.net

Question

I'm completely stuck in a situation and I have no idea on where to go from here. I'm creating a very large project, so my goal is to keep the code itself as clean as possible and keeping as many hacks as possible out of the mix.
Here is the situation.
I have a class called Woo_Type, it is the parent of my many derived classes.
Public MustInherit Class Woo_Type
Private Shared TypeList As New Dictionary(Of String, Woo_Type)
Public MustOverride Sub SetValue(ByVal val As Object)
Public MustOverride Function GetValue() As Object
Public Shared Function GetTypeFromName(ByVal name As String) As Woo_Type
Return TypeList(name)
End Function
Public Shared Sub AddType(ByVal name As String, ByVal def As Woo_Type)
TypeList.Add(name, def)
End Sub
End Class
I have many classes that Inherit from Woo_Type that have similar structures to this:
Public Class Woo_tpInt
Inherits Woo_Type
Private value As Integer = 0
Public Overrides Function GetValue() As Object
Return value
End Function
Public Overrides Sub SetValue(val As Object)
value = val
End Sub
End Class
I want to be able to do things like:
Woo_Type.GetTypeFromName("int")
And have it return something like the class or something...
At this point I'm really confused as to what I want and I didn't know if anybody had any suggestions. To make sure that GetTypeFromName worked correctly, I had in an Initializer sub the following:
Public Sub InitializeTypes()
Woo_Type.AddType("int", Woo_tpInt)
Woo_Type.AddType("String", Woo_tpInt)
End Sub
But I quickly realized that-that obviously doesn't work either.
So this may seem confusing but I'm basically wondering how to better structure this so that everything works...

Answer 1

What do you want to do with the result? Are you sure you don't simply need generics?
Public Class WooType(Of T)
Public Property Value As T
End Class
Public Class Test
Public Sub Foo()
Dim int As New WooType(Of Integer)
int.Value = 42
Dim str As New WooType(Of String)
str.Value = "Forty-Two"
End Sub
End Class

Answer 2

If what you want to do is get the type itself (as opposed to an object), I would recommend using reflection rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. For instance, to get the Woo_tpInt type, you could do this:
Dim a As Assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly()
Dim t As Type = a.GetType("WindowsApplication1.Woo_tpInt") ' Change WindowsApplication1 to whatever your namespace is
If you want to use a shorter name like "int" to mean "WindowsApplication1.Woo_tpInt", you could create a dictionary to store the translation table, for instance:
Dim typeNames As New Dictionary(Of String, String)
typeNames.Add("int", GetType(Woo_tpInt).FullName)
Dim a As Assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly()
Dim t As Type = a.GetType(typeNames("int"))