.Net reflection to get description of class / property etc?

Question

Hi,

I know its unlikely but I was wondering if there is any way to get the comments (i.e. the bits after the ''') of a class or property..? I have managed to get a list of properties of a class using the PropertyInfo class but I cant find a way to get the comments / description.. I need it for a guide I am writing for the administrators of my site - it would be great if it could automatically update if new properties are added, so there is no need to worry about updating it in the future too much. Anyone know how to do this? Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Richard

Answer 1

I think you are talking about the XML comments, right?

In that case, there are some third-party tools to turn those into various formats, including compiled help files and full-MSDN-style websites.

Jon Skeet just posted a blog about this last week:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/04/10/documentation-with-sandcastle-a-notebook.aspx

Answer 2

No, you can't do this using reflection.

What you can do is configure Visual Studio (or whatever build process you use) to create an XML file at build time containing the comments, which you could then distribute.

Answer 3

You can't access normal comments via reflection.
However, if you use xml-comments (I think that's in VB ''') there can be a documentation file created (in my C# project under project properties -> build -> output path/ xml documentation file) which you can access. But you don't need reflection for that.

Here and here are some descriptions for xml comments in VBasic.

Answer 4

Once a class is compiled the doc comments are long gone. If you compile with the /doc switch you will get an XML file with them though that you could use.

Answer 5

You can use property attributes to decorate properties, and use reflection to read the data in the attributes:

[Description('This is my property description')]
public String MyStringProp { get; set; }

Then use

FieldInfo.GetCustomAttributes

to read the description.