What's the simplest most elegant way to utilize a custom attribute

Question

So a little confession, I\'ve never written an attribute class. I understand they serve the purpose of decorating classes with flags or extra functionality possibly.

Answer 1

First create your attribute

public class ImportableAttribute : Attribute
{

}

Then a class with a item that uses the Attribute

[ImportableAttribute]
public class ImportClass
{
    [ImportableAttribute]
    public string Item {get; set;}
}

Then check if that property uses that attribute. Can be done with classes to.. Of course :)

PropertyInfo property = typeof(ImportClass).GetProperty("Item");

if (property.IsDefined(typeof(ImportableAttribute),true))
{
     // do something
}

With a class:

typeof(ImportClass).IsDefined(typeof(ImportableAttribute), true);