CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.netwpfobjectproperties
Atrotygma
Atrotygma

Reputation: 1153

Visualize object properties in a WPF control

Is it possible to visualize an object (its properties along with their values) and print it out (dump it - similar to serialization) to a WPF control, such as TreeView or PropertyGrid to inspect the object?

The goal is to display the contents of any arbitary object (not only for debugging purposes).

For further clarification: I'm not looking for any debugging tools or ways to show the WPF Visual Tree. This question has only partially something to do with WPF -> WPF is only the media to display the object dump because controls may vary between WPF and WinForms.

The output should be hierarchical for nested object instances, lists etc.

Object Visualization

Upvotes: 6

Views: 4021

Answers (6)

reach4thelasers
reach4thelasers

Reputation: 26909

I've been searching for the answer to this for months; Snoop, Spy and all the others didn't work for me, due to thread ownership violations.

Microsoft has a windows-tool that allows you to select any running UI Element and view the Element's accessibility data: 

inspect.exe

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd318521(VS.85).aspx

It's available in the windows Software Development Kits which need to be downloaded and installed, and located in:

C:\Program Files\x86\(win-version)\bin\(cpu-architecture)\inspect.exe

Upvotes: 0

SoManyGoblins
SoManyGoblins

Reputation: 5937

You mean besides the WPF Tree Visualizer? there is Mole, which is not free anymore, but very good.

Edit:

Reading your edited question. You are explicitly naming the PropertyGrid, I take it you've already tried Extended WPF Toolkit's PropertyGrid?

Upvotes: 2

Akash Kava
Akash Kava

Reputation: 39956

There are various existing controls that lets you view properties as Property Grid.

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/87715/Native-WPF-4-PropertyGrid

https://wpftoolkit.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=PropertyGrid

https://wpg.codeplex.com/

Based on complexity, License and features they present, you will have to choose one, all of them are free for sure.

Upvotes: 0

dowhilefor
dowhilefor

Reputation: 11051

So you want a control that displays at runtime the fields of a class. You will find plenty of articles regarding that by looking for "Property grid". Its not directly what you want but its a start. You basically iterate via reflection over the fields of a class, and display them in a ListView/TreeView. But, and this is were the difficult part starts, determining which fields to show and which to hide, handling with very different types and primitives and allow to edit them with type conversion (like string to Rect, point, color etc) is a very complex matter. This control might give you a good starting point.

Upvotes: 0

JaredPar
JaredPar

Reputation: 755387

I think you should take a look at Snoop

This program will allow you to navigate the WPF tree of any running application. Debugging is not required for this tool and it's possible the tool doesn't work with debugging. Typically I use it in non-debugging scenarios to see how my WPF controls are actually laid out and what values they have for various properties

Upvotes: 5

Jay
Jay

Reputation: 6294

I believe what you are looking for is the System.Diagnostics.DebuggerDisplayAttribute

Upvotes: 2

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