Attributes

C# Attributes are absolutely powerful.
Attributes are metadata that you attach to code elements (think classes, methods, properties, etc).
I like to think of attributes as tags that give additional information, but don’t directly affect the logic of the program.
They are used by the runtime (or libraries) to modify behavior.

Recently, I was backtesting some stock market performance indicators, particularly focusing on crossovers.
I wanted to experiment with every indicator and metric I could find, but I didn’t want my unit tests to keep running performance indicators or metrics with a low success rate.
To solve this, I created a custom attribute.

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Method)]
public class Debunked : Attribute
{
}

For my test setup, I’ve decided to ignore/skip all unit tests that have this attribute.

#region Setup
public TestContext TestContext { get; set; }
[TestInitialize]
public void CheckForDebunkedAttribute()
{
	var testContext = TestContext.TestName;
	var method = GetType().GetMethod(testContext);

	if (method != null && method.GetCustomAttribute<Debunked>() != null)
	{
		Assert.Inconclusive($"Test '{method.Name}' is marked as debunked and will not run.");
	}
}
#endregion