Custom Assembly Attributes

Question

I would like to know if I can define custom assembly attributes. Existing attributes are defined in the following way:

[assembly: AssemblyTitle("MyApplication")]  
[assembly: AssemblyDescription("This application is a sample application.")]  
[assembly: AssemblyCopyright("Copyright © MyCompany 2009")]

Is there a way I can do the following:

[assembly: MyCustomAssemblyAttribute("Hello World! This is a custom attribute.")]

For anyone curious, `AssemblyTitle` etc is located in `assemblyattributes.cs`. Here's the source: https://referencesource.microsoft.com/#mscorlib/system/reflection/assemblyattributes.cs. — mekb, Aug 24 '19 at 05:37

score 93 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 28 '13 at 14:09

93

Yes you can. We do this kind of thing.

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Assembly)]
public class MyCustomAttribute : Attribute {
    string someText;
    public MyCustomAttribute() : this(string.Empty) {}
    public MyCustomAttribute(string txt) { someText = txt; }
    ...
}

To read use this kind of linq stmt.

var attributes = assembly
    .GetCustomAttributes(typeof(MyCustomAttribute), false)
    .Cast<MyCustomAttribute>();

edited Jun 28 '13 at 14:09

Dan Cecile

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answered Dec 20 '09 at 20:44

Preet Sangha

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1

but how do you patch this in as a build property? – Sinaesthetic May 22 '19 at 18:01
@Sinaesthetic - what do you mean? – Preet Sangha May 24 '19 at 02:27
For example, a build server. To patch the build number in, you'd do something like `dotnet build -c Release /p:BuildNumber={BUILD_NUMBER}` so for something like this, I'd expect to be able to do `dotnet build -c Release /p:MyCustomAttribute=foo` – Sinaesthetic May 30 '19 at 23:17
@Sinaesthetic could you figure out that how to patch it as a build property? – mirind4 Jun 17 '19 at 05:32
Add the attribute to csproj setting the param from the property in build command. ``` <_Parameter1>$(MyCustomAttribute) ``` – tjmoore Feb 02 '22 at 20:56

score 8 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 20 '09 at 20:46

8

Yes, use AttributeTargets.Assembly:

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Assembly)]
public class AssemblyAttribute : Attribute { ... }

answered Dec 20 '09 at 20:46

Lee

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Custom Assembly Attributes

2 Answers2

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