object dumper class

Question

The object dumper posted in sgmoore's link:

//Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Reflection;

// See the ReadMe.html for additional information
public class ObjectDumper {

    public static void Write(object element)
    {
        Write(element, 0);
    }

    public static void Write(object element, int depth)
    {
        Write(element, depth, Console.Out);
    }

    public static void Write(object element, int depth, TextWriter log)
    {
        ObjectDumper dumper = new ObjectDumper(depth);
        dumper.writer = log;
        dumper.WriteObject(null, element);
    }

    TextWriter writer;
    int pos;
    int level;
    int depth;

    private ObjectDumper(int depth)
    {
        this.depth = depth;
    }

    private void Write(string s)
    {
        if (s != null) {
            writer.Write(s);
            pos += s.Length;
        }
    }

    private void WriteIndent()
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < level; i++) writer.Write("  ");
    }

    private void WriteLine()
    {
        writer.WriteLine();
        pos = 0;
    }

    private void WriteTab()
    {
        Write("  ");
        while (pos % 8 != 0) Write(" ");
    }

    private void WriteObject(string prefix, object element)
    {
        if (element == null || element is ValueType || element is string) {
            WriteIndent();
            Write(prefix);
            WriteValue(element);
            WriteLine();
        }
        else {
            IEnumerable enumerableElement = element as IEnumerable;
            if (enumerableElement != null) {
                foreach (object item in enumerableElement) {
                    if (item is IEnumerable && !(item is string)) {
                        WriteIndent();
                        Write(prefix);
                        Write("...");
                        WriteLine();
                        if (level < depth) {
                            level++;
                            WriteObject(prefix, item);
                            level--;
                        }
                    }
                    else {
                        WriteObject(prefix, item);
                    }
                }
            }
            else {
                MemberInfo[] members = element.GetType().GetMembers(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance);
                WriteIndent();
                Write(prefix);
                bool propWritten = false;
                foreach (MemberInfo m in members) {
                    FieldInfo f = m as FieldInfo;
                    PropertyInfo p = m as PropertyInfo;
                    if (f != null || p != null) {
                        if (propWritten) {
                            WriteTab();
                        }
                        else {
                            propWritten = true;
                        }
                        Write(m.Name);
                        Write("=");
                        Type t = f != null ? f.FieldType : p.PropertyType;
                        if (t.IsValueType || t == typeof(string)) {
                            WriteValue(f != null ? f.GetValue(element) : p.GetValue(element, null));
                        }
                        else {
                            if (typeof(IEnumerable).IsAssignableFrom(t)) {
                                Write("...");
                            }
                            else {
                                Write("{ }");
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
                if (propWritten) WriteLine();
                if (level < depth) {
                    foreach (MemberInfo m in members) {
                        FieldInfo f = m as FieldInfo;
                        PropertyInfo p = m as PropertyInfo;
                        if (f != null || p != null) {
                            Type t = f != null ? f.FieldType : p.PropertyType;
                            if (!(t.IsValueType || t == typeof(string))) {
                                object value = f != null ? f.GetValue(element) : p.GetValue(element, null);
                                if (value != null) {
                                    level++;
                                    WriteObject(m.Name + ": ", value);
                                    level--;
                                }
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }

    private void WriteValue(object o)
    {
        if (o == null) {
            Write("null");
        }
        else if (o is DateTime) {
            Write(((DateTime)o).ToShortDateString());
        }
        else if (o is ValueType || o is string) {
            Write(o.ToString());
        }
        else if (o is IEnumerable) {
            Write("...");
        }
        else {
            Write("{ }");
        }
    }
}

2015 Update

YAML also serves this purpose quite well, this is how it can be done with YamlDotNet

install-package YamlDotNet

    private static void DumpAsYaml(object o)
    {
        var stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
        var serializer = new Serializer();
        serializer.Serialize(new IndentedTextWriter(new StringWriter(stringBuilder)), o);
        Console.WriteLine(stringBuilder);
    }

You could use the JSON serialiser, which should be easy to read for anyone use to working with JSON

User theUser = new User();
theUser.Name = "Joe";
System.Runtime.Serialization.Json.DataContractJsonSerializer serializer = new System.Runtime.Serialization.Json.DataContractJsonSerializer(myPerson.GetType());
MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
serializer.WriteObject(ms, theUser );
string json = Encoding.Default.GetString(ms.ToArray()); 

Updated 2019

You can find the ObjectDumper project on GitHub. You can also add it via Visual Studio via NuGet package manager.

If you're working with markup, System.Web.ObjectInfo.Print (ASP.NET Web Pages 2) will accomplish this, nicely formatted for HTML.

For example:

@ObjectInfo.Print(new {
    Foo = "Hello",
    Bar = "World",
    Qux = new {
        Number = 42,
    },
})

In a webpage, produces:

Here's a visual studio extension I wrote to do this:

https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/c6a21c68-f815-4895-999f-cd0885d8774f

in action:

I know this is an old question, but thought I'd throw out an alternative that worked for me, took me about two minutes to do.

Install Newtonsoft Json.NET: http://james.newtonking.com/json

(or nuget version) http://www.nuget.org/packages/newtonsoft.json/

Reference Assembly:

using Newtonsoft.Json;

Dump JSON string to log:

txtResult.Text = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(testObj);

You could write that very easily with a little bit of reflection. Something kind of like:

public void Print(object value, int depth)
{
    foreach(var property in value.GetType().GetProperties())
    {
        var subValue = property.GetValue(value);
        if(subValue is IEnumerable)
        {
             PrintArray(property, (IEnumerable)subValue);
        }
        else
        {
             PrintProperty(property, subValue);
        }         
    }
}

You can write up the PrintArray and PrintProperty methods.