Attribute Sniffer: Collecting Attribute Metrics for C# Code

Abstract

The C# attributes have been available since the release of this language as a means to configure custom metadata on code elements. Being very similar to Java annotations, they are both introduced directly in the source code. Several C# frameworks such as NUnit, Unity Game Engine, and JSON.net use attributes to allow applications to configure custom metadata, as to execute different behavior and validation. This paper presents the Attribute Sniffer, a tool to collect attributes metrics on the C# source code, also validating the metrics proposed initially for Java annotations.

Towards Visualizing Code Annotations Distribution

“…To measure code annotations usage and analyze their distribution, our previous work [1] proposed a novel suite of software metrics dedicated to code annotations, and to obtain threshold values from a Percentile Rank Analysis approach [2]. A version for the C# attribute was also performed by [3].…”