Use DebuggerBrowsable Attribute for a better view in debugger window

There are lots of simple tricks in .net which can be very useful if you used wisely. In this post I want to discuss the use of DebuggerBrowsableAttribute. Using this attribute you can control how a member of class will be displayed in debugger windows during debugging. Before that consider small example:

public class Customer
    {

        public string CustomerId
        {
            set;
            get;
        }
        public string CustomerName
        {
            set;
            get;
        }
        public string CustomerLocation
        {
            set;
            get;
        }
        public string CustomerGuid
        {
            set;
            get;
        }
    }

Lets create a instance of Organization and add some sample data:

List<Customer> customers = new List<Customer>();
customers.Add(new Customer { CustomerId = "1", CustomerName = "BenCustomer", CustomerLocation = "New York", CustomerGuid = System.Guid.NewGuid().ToString() });
customers.Add(new Customer { CustomerId = "2", CustomerName = "JonhCustomer", CustomerLocation = "London", CustomerGuid = System.Guid.NewGuid().ToString() });
customers.Add(new Customer { CustomerId = "3", CustomerName = "HarryCustomer", CustomerLocation = "Sydney", CustomerGuid = System.Guid.NewGuid().ToString() });
customers.Add(new Customer { CustomerId = "4", CustomerName = "CrisCustomer", CustomerLocation = "Kolkata", CustomerGuid = System.Guid.NewGuid().ToString() });

Now when you run this program in debug mode and try to view the customers in debugger window .


Lets try to change it using DebuggerBrowsableAttribute. Make following changes by adding DebuggerBrowsableAttribute:

[DebuggerBrowsable(DebuggerBrowsableState.Never)]
public string CustomerGuid
{
   set;
   get;
}

Again run this program in debug mode and try to view the customers in debugger window. Now You can see how “CustomerGuid” is gone out.