Question

How do I view the content of a Stream in the QuickWatch window within Visual Studio?

Update

As per Daniel’s answer I used the following code –

System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString((byte[])stream.GetType().GetMethod("InternalGetBuffer", System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.NonPublic).Invoke(stream, null))

Answer 1

You can view the content of the MemoryStream without altering it when you can make some assumptions:

1. Your stream indeed is a MemoryStream
2. Your stream contains only string data
3. You know the encoding of that string, e.g. UTF8 or ASCII

If you can make these assumptions, you can use the following code in your Watch window:

System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString((byte[])stream.GetType().GetMethod("InternalGetBuffer", System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.NonPublic).Invoke(stream, null))

Disclaimer:
This might have side effects I haven’t thought of or might throw an exception in certain circumstances, so don’t use this in production code.