Debugging a page that uses many methods from other classes can become a right pain in the neck. I find myself accidentally stepping into a method that I don’t need to debug or wanting to output specific values from my methods straight away. Being the cowboy (correction, agile) developer that I am, one of my code boffins at work showed me a two cool ways to meet my debugging needs:
1) DubuggerHidden Attribute
Using the DubuggerHidden attribute tells the Visual Studio debugger that the method is hidden from the debugging process. The simple example below, shows the DebuggerHidden attribute in use:
protected void btnDoSomething_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
//Output random number to Textbox
txtOutput.Text = GetNumber(1, 10).ToString();
}
[DebuggerHidden]
int GetNumber(int min, int max)
{
System.Random random = new Random();
return random.Next(min, max);
}
2) DebuggerDisplay Attrubute
The DebuggerDisplay attribute allows us to output variable values from a class or method to be displayed in our Visual Studio debugger. The attribute includes a single argument that is supplied as a string. The string can contain references to fields, properties and methods in the class so that the actual values from an object may be included in its description.
[DebuggerDisplay("a={a}, b={b}, ValueTotal={CalculateValues()}")]
public class AddValues
{
public int a { get; set; }
public int b { get; set; }
public int CalculateValues()
{
return a + b;
}
}
You also have the ability to include simple expressions, like so:
[DebuggerDisplay("a={a}, b={b}, ValueTotal={CalculateValues() * 2}")]
In addition to the “DebuggerHidden” and DebuggerDisplay attributes, .NET contains some very useful attributes that modify the behaviour of a debugger. For me, they weren’t as interesting as the two debugger attributes I listed above. :-)