Describer
Describer is a feature of SPCoder that allows you to explore the properties of any object from SPCoder context. Describer window is by default opened in central dock position. It can be activated by right clicking the item in Context and choosing the Describe option in context menu or by clicking the Describer button on Toolstrip or main Window menu.
Describer shows all the properties of the object in text format, so they can easily be checked or selected and copied if needed.
The text input field also accepts the expressions, so you can either write just variable name (main in first example) or an expression (main.AccessibilityObject in other example).
If you need to check the inner property of an object, you can just double-click its name and it will automatically be appended to the previous expression. So you just need to click Describe button to view its properties (Bounds in second example).
Describer window contains several settings.
- Sort - you can sort properties by names or values, ascending or descending
- Max value size - maximal number of characters of the property value that will be displayed. This can be useful when working with large strings
- Editable - controls if it should be possible to edit the content of the displayed text. Values of properties can not be edited, just the displayed text.
- Word wrap - controls if word wrap should be turned on in display text control.
- MSDN link - in case the type of a property comes from Microsoft, this link will open the msdn page for that type (Bounds in the third example is of type System.Drawing.Rectangle so clicking on the MSDN link in third example will open the Microsoft documentation page for that type.
- Breadcrumbs - with this you can track the path of your object graph, and easily check properties of some previous object.
- Indexer - If your variable contains items that can be accessed using an indexer, like an array, you can use the Up/Down indexer control to display its items.
Example MSDN page:
