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Source Code

The AttributedCarLibrary project is included in the Chapter 16 subdirectory.

Reflecting on Attributes Using Early Binding

As mentioned in this chapter, an attribute is quite useless until some piece of software reflects

over its values. Once a given attribute has been discovered, that piece of software can take

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whatever course of action necessary. Now, like any application, this “other piece of software”

could discover the presence of a custom attribute using either early binding or late binding. If you

wish to make use of early binding, you’ll require the client application to have a compile-time

definition of the attribute in question (VehicleDescriptionAttribute in this case). Given that the

AttributedCarLibrary assembly has defined this custom attribute as a public class, early binding is

the best option.

To illustrate the process of reflecting on custom attributes, create a new C# Console Applica-

tion named VehicleDescriptionAttributeReader. Next, set a reference to the AttributedCarLibrary

assembly. Finally, update your initial *.cs file with the following code: