Proposal: CallerTypeNameAttribute to provide nameof class/struct that is calling method.

[nathan130200]

As the title says, the introduction of the attribute [CallerTypeName] which will provide the method with the name of the type that is invoking the current method, as well as [CallerMemberName]. Used especially in logging functions.

In asynchronous functions (context: async/await/task) the value will receive the original type that invoked this function.

Example:

static class Utilities
{

    void WriteToStdout([CallerTypeName] string typeName = default, [CallerMemberName] string memberName = default)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("[{0}::{1}]: invoked!", typeName, memberName);
    }

}

• typeName will be nameof(Utilities) same behaviour as memberName that will be WriteToStdout.

I had this problem while writing a micro logger to handle specific tasks with more logging details. And when I realized that I was either creating a gigantic work-around or creating scoped loggers that store the methodbase instance or method/type name.

And as C# does not support expansive macros like C++, it is not possible to simply write a macro that calls all the necessary functions by passing MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod() in each of them. (it would be something like #define INVOKE_LOG(LogInst, Msg) LogInst.WriteLine(Msg, MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod()))

[AustinWise]

There is a discussion in the C# Language repo with a similar proposal: dotnet/csharplang#87