Logging method name in .NET

Introduction

Before .NET, we were always looking for a way to log current method name in a log file for better logging. But, there were no functionalities that could have helped in this, and it was left as an uncompleted job.

But, with .NET, we could easily find out the name of the current method or parent method. This has been accomplished by StackFrame, StackTrace, and MethodBase classes in System.Diagnostics and System.Reflection namespaces.

• StackFrame provides information about function call on stack call for current process.
• StackTrace is a collection of StackFrame.
• MethodBase is an abstract class containing information about current method.

Note: When an exception occurs in the method, exception object contains a reference to the StackTrace object that could be used to log the method name. But for logging a method name without an error generated, we need to read it from the stack, using StackFrame class.

In the sample, MethodBase object would reference to current function on stack call returned by StackFrame object. To get the parent method, we would use StackTrace to get parent’s StackFrame object.

Create a new console application:

Add namespaces:

using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Reflection;

Create a new static function named WhatsMyName and call it from the Main function.

[STAThread]
static void Main(string[] args)
{
    WhatsMyName();
}
// function to display its name
private static void WhatsMyName()
{
    StackFrame stackFrame = new StackFrame();
    MethodBase methodBase = stackFrame.GetMethod();
    Console.WriteLine(methodBase.Name ); // Displays “WhatsmyName”
    WhoCalledMe();
}
// Function to display parent function
private static void WhoCalledMe()
{
    StackTrace stackTrace = new StackTrace();
    StackFrame stackFrame = stackTrace.GetFrame(1);
    MethodBase methodBase = stackFrame.GetMethod();
    // Displays “WhatsmyName”
    Console.WriteLine( " Parent Method Name {0} ", methodBase.Name ); 
}

Note: This feature is not available in .NET Compact Framework as StackFrame class is unavailable. For that, you would need to use same old method of manually passing method name to the logging function.