How to: Provide Metadata for Component Properties, Methods, and Events

Article
11/03/2006

You can attach descriptive metadata to your properties, methods, and events by using attributes. Attributes are specialized classes that modify code elements and are emitted into metadata about those code elements at compile time. Design-time attributes interact with the development environment to provide the developer with information about your component. An example of a commonly used attribute is the DescriptionAttribute. When attached to a property or event, the DescriptionAttribute attribute causes a short string to be displayed in the Properties window. An example is shown below:

Imports System.ComponentModel
<Description("This property specifies the active Widget")> Public _
   Property ActiveWidget as Widget
' Insert code to implementat functionality.
End Property

using System.ComponentModel;
[Description("This property specifies the active Widget")]
public Widget ActiveWidget
{
   // Insert code to implementat functionality.
}

For details about attributes you can use to enhance design-time support for your component, see Design-Time Attributes for Components.

To attach an attribute to a property, method, or event

Add a call to the attribute's constructor to the code element you wish to modify. The call is added by placing it in angle brackets <> (for Visual Basic) or brackets [] (for C#), preceding the code element you want to modify.
```
<Browsable(False)> Public Property ServingSize as Integer
```
```
[Browsable(false)]
public int ServingSize
```

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How to: Provide Metadata for Component Properties, Methods, and Events

To attach an attribute to a property, method, or event

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