A better tracing routine

In .NET 4.5 three new attributes were introduced. They can be used to pass into a method the details of the caller and this can be used to create better trace or logging messages. In the example below, it outputs tracing messages in a format that you can use in Visual Studio to automatically jump to the appropriate line of source code if you need it to.

The three new attributes are:

• CallerFilePathAttribute (string)
• CallerLineNumberAttribute (int)
• CallerMemberNameAttribute (string)

If you decorate the parameters of a method with the above attributes (respecting the types, in brackets afterwards) then the values will be injected in at compile time.

For example:

public class Tracer
{
    public static void WriteLine(string message,
                            [CallerMemberName] string memberName = "",
                            [CallerFilePath] string sourceFilePath = "",
                            [CallerLineNumber] int sourceLineNumber = 0)
    {
        string fullMessage = string.Format("{1}({2},0): {0}{4}>> {3}", 
            memberName,sourceFilePath,sourceLineNumber, 
            message, Environment.NewLine);

        Console.WriteLine("{0}", fullMessage);
        Trace.WriteLine(fullMessage);
    }
}

The above method can then be used to in preference to the built in Trace.WriteLine and it will output the details of where the message came from. The format that the full message is output in is also in a format where you can double click the line in the Visual Studio output window and it will take you to that line in the source.

Here is an example of the output:

c:\dev\spike\Caller\Program.cs(13,0): Main
>> I'm Starting up.
c:\dev\spike\Caller\SomeOtherClass.cs(7,0): DoStuff
>> I'm doing stuff.

The lines with the file path and line numbers on them can be double-clicked in the Visual Studio output window and you will be taken directly to the line of code it references.

What happens when you call Tracer.WriteLine is that the compiler injects literal values in place of the parameters.

So, if you write something like this:

Tracer.WriteLine("I'm doing stuff.");

Then the compiler will output this:

Tracer.WriteLine("I'm doing stuff.", "DoStuff", "c:\\dev\\spike\\Caller\\SomeOtherClass.cs", 7);