What are attributes in .NET?

Attributes are a kind of meta data for tagging classes. This is often used in WinForms for example to hide controls from the toolbar, but can be implemented in your own application to enable instances of different classes to behave in specific ways.

Start by creating an attribute:

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Class, AllowMultiple=false, Inherited=true)]
public class SortOrderAttribute : Attribute
{
    public int SortOrder { get; set; }

    public SortOrderAttribute(int sortOrder)
    {
        this.SortOrder = sortOrder;
    }
}

All attribute classes must have the suffix "Attribute" to be valid.
After this is done, create a class that uses the attribute.

[SortOrder(23)]
public class MyClass
{
    public MyClass()
    {
    }
}

Now you can check a specific class' SortOrderAttribute (if it has one) by doing the following:

public class MyInvestigatorClass
{
    public void InvestigateTheAttribute()
    {
        // Get the type object for the class that is using
        // the attribute.
        Type type = typeof(MyClass);

        // Get all custom attributes for the type.
        object[] attributes = type.GetCustomAttributes(
            typeof(SortOrderAttribute), true);

        // Now let's make sure that we got at least one attribute.
        if (attributes != null && attributes.Length > 0)
        {
            // Get the first attribute in the list of custom attributes
            // that is of the type "SortOrderAttribute". This should only
            // be one since we said "AllowMultiple=false".
            SortOrderAttribute attribute = 
                attributes[0] as SortOrderAttribute;

            // Now we can get the sort order for the class "MyClass".
            int sortOrder = attribute.SortOrder;
        }
    }
}

If you want to read more about this you can always check out answered 2008-08-21T16:33:08.587

You can use custom attributes as a simple way to define tag values in sub classes without having to write the same code over and over again for each subclass. I came across a nice concise example by John Waters of how to define and use custom attributes in your own code.

There is a tutorial at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa288454(VS.71).aspx