C# Attributes

Just a short post today. Though I'll try to stick to generally applicable programming techniques / articles / entries, I'll occasionally go language or technology specific.

I'm loving working in C# - I only really started C# programming about a year ago and I'm learning more and more about it and really enjoying it.

When I discovered the Property Grid, I thought it was fantastic. The property grid is used to expose properties to the user. The user can view or edit these properties, depending on whether get and set methods are defined. You can do a whole host of things with the property grid, such as putting properties into categories with the Category attribute, specifying default values with the DefaultValue attribute, and you can even specify that a property isn't shown in the grid with the Browsable attribute.

Pretty soon after learning about the property grid, I was using it for everything. Then one day I decided that it would be useful if I could dynamically change what was shown in the property grid at runtime.

I spent a whole day looking for information on how to change attributes at run time. I learned about reflection, I learned about creating attributes, I learned about applying attributes. But I couldn't find out how to change attributes dynamically.

I could have saved a whole day if I'd learned at the start that attributes are compiled into the executable and can't be changed on the fly.

So I'm posting this so that there's a million to one chance that if somebody else is searching for how to change attributes dynamically, they get to read this early on and don't waste the amount of time I did.

Update: 5th July 2008
I've posted some more information on dynamic property grids, in case you were looking for it.