Understand Caller Information in C# 5.0

Understand Caller Information in C# 5.0

In this article we will understand one new concept of C# 5.0 called Caller Information. Before start discussion with caller information we will try to understand how the new feature will help us in project development.

Caller information gives information about caller of any function. Previously if any exception occurs in the program, it way bit tough to write all information about error in log file. The reason is we had to trace the error location using StackTrace property of Exception object. And in general the output is very lengthy string. In C# 5.0 the caller info feature has introduced and using this feature we can easily get information about caller function.

Caller Info attributes

Caller Info supports three attributes and those are

CallerFilePath :- Return file path of Caller function. Data type is String

CallerLineNumber:- Return line number of caller function . Data type is int.

CallerMemberName:- Name of caller method. Data Type is string.

Example:-

Let’s implement small example with Caller Info attributes.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Runtime.CompilerServices;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
namespace Asynchronious
{
    class Test
    {
        public void dummy(
            String message,
            [CallerFilePath] string file = "",
            [CallerLineNumber] int line = 0,
            [CallerMemberName] string member = ""
            )
        {
 
            {
                Console.WriteLine("File Path:- " + file);
                Console.WriteLine("Line Number:- " + line);
                Console.WriteLine("Member Name:- " + member);
                Console.WriteLine("Message:- " + message);
            }
 
        }
 
        class Program
        {
            public static void Main(String[] args)
            {
                Test t = new Test();
                t.dummy("Dummy Message");
                Console.ReadLine();
            }
        }
    }
}

Here is sample output.

Few more information about Caller Info attributes

Caller Info attributes are sealed classes and inherited from Attribute class.

To use caller Info, we have to include  using System.Runtime.CompilerServices; namespace

We have to specify default value of all attributes.

conclusion:-

In this quick article we have learned what is caller info attribute and how to use it in application. It is the feature of C# 5.0 and .NET framework 4.5 is needed to use it in application.