Question

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How I can get the calling methods in C#

I have a Log class that’s supposed to prepend its client’s class and method to the logged message like this:

[ClientClass.ClientMethod] This is the logged message.

And I’m looking for a safe way to obtain these values from the Log class, without passing it as a parameter from the client. I have tried this so far:

var stackFrame = new StackFrame(StackFramesToSkip);
var method = stackFrame.GetMethod();
return string.Format("[{0}.{1}] {2}", method.DeclaringType.Name, method.Name, message);

However, this method doesn’t always yield the calling method. Especially when working with multiple threads.

Is there a safe way of doing this? I’m out of ideas.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You could use System.Reflection.MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod() to get the current method’s name and transfer the name to a parameter, but you said you didn’t want those. Well, I know several other ways.

1. For .NET 4.5 beta, you can use this Caller Information.
2. You can use a dynamic proxy. The logging method will still require a parameter, but a dynamic proxy allows you to make the invocation only once, and dynamically add it to your methods. You can use ContextBoundObject or Castle Dynamic Proxy
3. You can use an AOP framework. This allows you to do something similar to (2), but it’s neater. Basically, depending on the framework, the invocation can be added statically instead of dynamically, at build time. Here is a good AOP framework: PostSharp.

The one time I got to do this, I added the calls by hand. I thought it would be daunting at first, but in my case, it wasn’t really that bad. I had a very limited assortment of methods to log (those that communicated with COM).