.NET: Getting current method name or a method in the stack frame

I would love to go into the details of what is and how the StackFrame object works. However, I'm a little short on time right now, but I'm pretty sure I will make a post about it in the future.

For now, let's focus on how to get a very common functionality, but that isn't applied much yet. First, let's see what we can get and how. Next, I will give you some ideas on where to apply it.

You can 2 things to get the current method name. Using reflection:

string MethodName = System.Reflection.MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod().Name;

Or using the StackFrame:

string MethodName = new StackFrame(0).GetMethod().Name;

Cool, now we get the current method name. Now what if we wanted the previous method? Perhaps my method is called from various places and I do not wish to have their name as a parameter.

We can use StackFrame for this:

string MethodName = new StackFrame(1).GetMethod().Name

So, what can we use this for? Let's see some ideas:

• Now our loggers can keep track of the method that's logging the information.
• Gettng the methods (not the name) can help you retrieve the parameters it has received. We will see this in a future post. This information can be excellent when your application is deployed and you are getting an error that you can not reproduce.
• In a certain way, you could limit the methods that can call your method. This seems weird at first, but perhaps some security folks can use this to their advantage.
• Remove all those hardcoded strings!! Or constants at least :)