Attributes on an interface

Question

I have a interface that defines some methods with attributes. These attributes need to be accessed from the calling method, but the method I have does not pull the attributes from the interface. What am I missing?

public class SomeClass: ISomeInterface
{
    MyAttribute GetAttribute()
    {
        StackTrace stackTrace = new StackTrace();
        StackFrame stackFrame = stackTrace.GetFrame(1);
        MethodBase methodBase = stackFrame.GetMethod();
        object[] attributes = methodBase.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(MyAttribute), true);
        if (attributes.Count() == 0)
            throw new Exception("could not find MyAttribute defined for " + methodBase.Name);
        return attributes[0] as MyAttribute;
    }

    void DoSomething()
    {
        MyAttribute ma = GetAttribute();
        string s = ma.SomeProperty;
    }
}

Answer 1

The methodBase will be the method on the class, not the interface. You will need to look for the same method on the interface. In C# this is a little simpler (since it must be like-named), but you would need to consider things like explicit implementation. If you have VB code it will be trickier, since VB method "Foo" can implement an interface method "Bar". To do this, you would need to investigate the interface map:

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Reflection;
interface IFoo
{
    void AAA(); // just to push Bar to index 1
    [Description("abc")]
    void Bar();
}
class Foo : IFoo
{
    public void AAA() { } // just to satisfy interface
    static void Main()
    {
        IFoo foo = new Foo();
        foo.Bar();
    }
    void IFoo.Bar()
    {
        GetAttribute();
    }

    void GetAttribute()
    { // simplified just to obtain the [Description]

        StackTrace stackTrace = new StackTrace();
        StackFrame stackFrame = stackTrace.GetFrame(1);
        MethodBase classMethod = stackFrame.GetMethod();
        InterfaceMapping map = GetType().GetInterfaceMap(typeof(IFoo));
        int index = Array.IndexOf(map.TargetMethods, classMethod);
        MethodBase iMethod = map.InterfaceMethods[index];
        string desc = ((DescriptionAttribute)Attribute.GetCustomAttribute(iMethod, typeof(DescriptionAttribute))).Description;
    }
}

Answer 2

Mark's method will work for non-generic interfaces. But it appears that I am dealing with some that have generics

interface IFoo<T> {}
class Foo<T>: IFoo<T>
{
  T Bar()
}

It appears that the T is replaced with the actual classType in the map.TargetMethods.

Answer 3

While I will first confess that I have never tried to attach attributes to Interfaces but would something like the following work for you?

public abstract class SomeBaseClass: ISomeInterface
{
     [MyAttribute]
     abstract void MyTestMethod();


}

public SomeClass : SomeBaseClass{

  MyAttribute GetAttribute(){
      Type t = GetType();
      object[] attibutes = t.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(MyAttribute), false);

      if (attributes.Count() == 0)
            throw new Exception("could not find MyAttribute defined for " + methodBase.Name);
        return attributes[0] as MyAttribute;
  }


  ....
}