Back to Basics : Understanding .NET Attributes

.NET assemblies are said to be self-describing. That means the information about an assembly is stored in the assembly itself. This information is called Metadata. Moreover, .NET allows you to put additional information in the metadata through Attributes. Attributes are used in many places within the .NET framework. Some examples of attributes are [WebMethod], [ServiceContract], and several data annotation attributes such as [Required] and [StringLength]. This article discusses what attributes are, how to use inbuilt attributes and how to create custom attributes.

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