{"id":5153,"date":"2022-10-10T21:33:08","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T21:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/?p=5153"},"modified":"2022-10-11T08:27:03","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T08:27:03","slug":"creating-a-visual-studio-debug-visualizer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/creating-a-visual-studio-debug-visualizer\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating a Visual Studio debug visualizer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Note: This post was written a while back but sat in draft. I&#8217;ve published this now, but I&#8217;m not sure it&#8217;s relevant to the latest versions etc. so please bear this in mind.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A Visualizer is a feature where, if you run an app. and whilst debugging you put the mouse over a variable a little debugger popup appears. You have a drop down to display the value in the variable as XML, HTML etc.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Create class lib project<\/li>\n<li>Add references to Microsoft.VisualStudio.DebuggerVisualizers.dll and System.Windows.Forms<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<pre class=\"brush: csharp; title: ; notranslate\" title=\"\">\r\nusing Microsoft.VisualStudio.DebuggerVisualizers;\r\nusing System.Windows.Forms;\r\n\r\n&#x5B;\r\n    assembly: System.Diagnostics.DebuggerVisualizer(\r\n        typeof(MyFirstVisualizer.DebuggerSide),\r\n        typeof(VisualizerObjectSource),\r\n        Target = typeof(System.String),\r\n        Description = &quot;My First Visualizer&quot;)\r\n]\r\nnamespace MyFirstVisualizer\r\n{\r\n    public class DebuggerSide : DialogDebuggerVisualizer\r\n    {\r\n        protected override void Show(IDialogVisualizerService windowService, IVisualizerObjectProvider objectProvider)\r\n        {\r\n            MessageBox.Show(objectProvider.GetObject().ToString());\r\n        }\r\n\r\n        public static void TestShowVisualizer(object objectToVisualize)\r\n        {\r\n            var visualizerHost = new VisualizerDevelopmentHost(objectToVisualize, typeof(DebuggerSide));\r\n            visualizerHost.ShowVisualizer();\r\n        }\r\n    }\r\n}\r\n<\/pre>\n<p>TestShowVisualizer allows us to test from a console app<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Create console app<\/li>\n<li>Add reference to Microsoft.VisualStudio.DebuggerVisualizers.dll and our project reference<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<pre class=\"brush: csharp; title: ; notranslate\" title=\"\">\r\nclass TestConsole\r\n{\r\n   static void Main(string&#x5B;] args)\r\n   {\r\n      var myString = &quot;Hello, World&quot;;\r\n      DebuggerSide.TestShowVisualizer(myString);\r\n   }\r\n}\r\n<\/pre>\n<p>To install, copy to <\/p>\n<pre class=\"brush: plain; title: ; notranslate\" title=\"\">\r\n{visual studio deployment folder};\\Common7\\Packages\\Debugger\\Visualizers\r\n<\/pre>\n<p>i.e. C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\\Common7\\Packages\\Debugger\\Visualizers<\/p>\n<p>and<\/p>\n<p>MyDocuments\\Visual Studio 2015\\Visualizers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Note: This post was written a while back but sat in draft. I&#8217;ve published this now, but I&#8217;m not sure it&#8217;s relevant to the latest versions etc. so please bear this in mind. A Visualizer is a feature where, if you run an app. and whilst debugging you put the mouse over a variable a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-visual-studio-2015"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5153"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9569,"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5153\/revisions\/9569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}