How to get the “master caller” method class name inside a DLL in c#?

Question

I'm currently doing a project on Unity3D with C# where I need to get the name of the "master caller" class name of a method and get it to a string. So far I've been using Stacktrace for it and its working marvellously.

This is the code used to achieve it:

string editorName = "Editor";
System.Diagnostics.StackFrame frame = new System.Diagnostics.StackFrame(0, true);

for ( int i = 1; !frame.GetFileName().Contains( editorName ) || frame.GetFileName().Contains( "InterfaceEditor" ); i++ )
{
    frame = new System.Diagnostics.StackFrame(i, true);
}

string method = frame.GetFileName(); //get the full path of the file that contains the class who called the getElements method
string[] splitSlash = method.Split ('\\'); //split the string with slash
string editorClassName = splitSlash [splitSlash.Length - 1].Split ('.') [0]; //get only the name of the file, without the .cs extension
string nameBody = editorClassName.Substring(0, editorClassName.Length - editorName.Length ); //get the substring that does not containt the "Editor" ending

An example of the call hierarchy goes like this:

JointEditor -> InterfaceEditor -> MultiLanguageParser

So the nameBody string in this example would be "Joint".

As I said this is working great so far, but now I have to make a DLL of this project and once this is done, the StackFrame begins to return NULL.

Is there another way to achieve the same result but on a DLL? I know that this will work if I start to pass the Class itself as a parameter to my final method, but I find this to be a very ugly solution, which is why the StackTrace solution was chosen in the first place.

Answer 1

I recommend using the "ugly method" you described, for three simple reasons:

1. It's easier
2. Navigating the stack trace during runtime is commonly regarded bad design.
3. Reflection, especially on the stack trace, is painfuly slow (slightly exaggerated ;) ). And since your coding for unity3D I'm assuming, performance is a factor.

With these thoughts in mind, I'd propose passing the Type of the caller to the callee directly and work with the type.Name Property