Microsoft® Visual C#® .NET 2003 Unleashed

Using Code Attributes

This next section illustrates the concepts surrounding code attributes, including an overview of attributes and how they work, and finally a sample showing you how to create and consume custom code attributes.

Introduction to Code Attributes

The .NET Framework allows for many kinds of metadata to be stored with code. You can store resources embedded in assemblies, and assemblies have metadata that describes things such as product name, product version, and the list of required and referenced assemblies.

In addition to the standard metadata, there are code attributes that can be used to “decorate” code. These attributes provide extremely useful information about the code, and can even dictate how the code is executed by its ...