How to fin Class/Entity References and Line Number

Saifullah 1

Hi folks,
I hope you are doing well.

I want to write a program in C# that extract the class/entity references and with there line numbers where it is used in solution.

I do research from internet I have found some references() but it can't me help.

Could anyone one suggest me how i do it or there is any nugget package available for it.

Thank you.

3 answers

Cheong00 3,471 Reputation points

2020-11-26T06:03:31.31+00:00

You may want to check the PDB file format and read the PDB file generated when compiling projects.

https://github.com/Microsoft/microsoft-pdb/
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Saifullah 1 Reputation point

2020-11-26T06:11:05.15+00:00

I have check it. its is not relevant.

Cheong00 3,471 Reputation points

2020-11-26T07:10:24.193+00:00

Why it's not relevent? The full source file paths and line numbers for each members of classes in the compiled binaries are stored there.

AFAIK the same file format is used in CLR projects as well. If you try to open a PDB file generated by C# compiler with text editor, you'll see the "Microsoft C/C++ MSF 7.00" file signature in the beginning.

If you need easier to understand version of documentation, you can try this one on Google Code Archive referenced in the "doc/ExternalResources.md".

https://code.google.com/archive/p/pdbparser/wikis

Cheong00 3,471 Reputation points

2020-11-26T07:40:42.727+00:00

There is also article from the Wayback Machine describing how to read from PDB file generated in C# project.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190202073158/https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jmstall/2005/08/25/converting-a-managed-pdb-into-a-xml-file/

Unfortunately this blog is not selected for migration to the Microsoft Blogs Archive.

As you can see there, for each "method" element in methods, the "file_ref" attribute points to the "file" element on top with corresponding "id", and "start_row" and "end_row" contains the line numbers for each MSIL code points within the method. It would be easy to just get the min(start_row) and max(end_row) to determine the line numbers scope for a particular method.

Saifullah 1 Reputation point

2020-11-26T08:02:17.31+00:00

I have followed the following the link
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58969976/find-class-references-in-c-sharp-source-code-with-roslyn.

but give me an error when read the solution to extract class references and with their line numbers
C# language not support.
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Cheong00 3,471 Reputation points

2020-11-26T07:48:20.357+00:00

With the reference ISymbolReader in the blog page, you may want to see if you can get System.Diagnostics.SymbolStore.SymReader works for you. (Need to add reference to ISymWrapper.dll of your .NET runtime)

And there is source code for the PDB2XML tool. Check SymUtil class to see how to load ISymbolReader in C#.
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Saifullah 1 Reputation point

2020-11-26T08:02:02.203+00:00

I have followed the following the link
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58969976/find-class-references-in-c-sharp-source-code-with-roslyn.

but give me an error when read the solution to extract class references and with their line numbers
C# language not support.

Cheong00 3,471 Reputation points

2020-11-26T08:35:55.213+00:00

The updated version can be found on here.

Cheong00 3,471 Reputation points

2020-11-26T09:05:12.823+00:00

Used "git clone" to clone URL https://github.com/SymbolSource/Microsoft.Samples.Debugging

Go to src folder then open MDbg.sln

Right click "pdb2xml" project and "Build". The compiled binaries can be found in "bin/Debug" of the git workspace folder (not inside individual project).

Run "pdb2xml pdb2xml.exe pdb2xml.xml" to attempt create XML dump of itself and success, proving that it works for C# projects.

Saifullah 1 Reputation point

2020-11-26T10:40:35.217+00:00

ok i will try it out
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Cheong00 3,471 Reputation points

2020-11-26T07:55:22.757+00:00

Btw, for .NET Core (i.e.: .NET 5+) there is another PDB format that is slightly different.
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Saifullah 1 Reputation point

2020-11-26T08:01:50.583+00:00

I have followed the following the link
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58969976/find-class-references-in-c-sharp-source-code-with-roslyn.

but give me an error when read the solution to extract class references and with their line numbers
C# language not support.
Sign in to comment