Is there any way to request an instance from the StructureMap ObjectFactory by the string name of the type? For example, it would be nice to do something like this:

var thing = ObjectFactory.GetInstance("Thing");

The use case here is a messaging scenario in which the message is very generic and contains only the name of a task. The handler receives the message, gets the task name from the message and retrieves the Type of task runner from a configuration database. StructureMap scans all the assemblies in a directory and one of them will contain the Type returned from the config database which then needs to be instantiated.

The other possibility is to grab a Type instance by doing the following:

var type = Type.GetType("Thing");

But the problem there is the assembly may or may/not be loaded in the AppDomain so that reflection call isn't always possible.