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();
}
private static void WhatsMyName()
{
StackFrame stackFrame = new StackFrame();
MethodBase methodBase = stackFrame.GetMethod();
Console.WriteLine(methodBase.Name );
WhoCalledMe();
}
private static void WhoCalledMe()
{
StackTrace stackTrace = new StackTrace();
StackFrame stackFrame = stackTrace.GetFrame(1);
MethodBase methodBase = stackFrame.GetMethod();
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.
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