Find methods that have custom attribute using reflection

stoic picture stoic · Aug 12, 2010 · Viewed 52.6k times · Source

I have a custom attribute:

public class MenuItemAttribute : Attribute
{
}

and a class with a few methods:

public class HelloWorld
{
    [MenuItemAttribute]
    public void Shout()
    {
    }

    [MenuItemAttribute]
    public void Cry()
    {
    }

    public void RunLikeHell()
    {
    }
}

How can I get only the methods that are decorated with the custom attribute?

So far, I have this:

string assemblyName = fileInfo.FullName;
byte[] assemblyBytes = File.ReadAllBytes(assemblyName);
Assembly assembly = Assembly.Load(assemblyBytes);

foreach (Type type in assembly.GetTypes())
{
     System.Attribute[] attributes = System.Attribute.GetCustomAttributes(type);

     foreach (Attribute attribute in attributes)
     {
         if (attribute is MenuItemAttribute)
         {
             //Get me the method info
             //MethodInfo[] methods = attribute.GetType().GetMethods();
         }
     }
}

What I need now is to get the method name, the return type, as well as the parameters it accepts.

Answer

SLaks picture SLaks · Aug 12, 2010

Your code is completely wrong.
You are looping through every type that has the attribute, which will not find any types.

You need to loop through every method on every type and check whether it has your attribute.

For example:

var methods = assembly.GetTypes()
                      .SelectMany(t => t.GetMethods())
                      .Where(m => m.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(MenuItemAttribute), false).Length > 0)
                      .ToArray();