CategoryAttribute Class

A CategoryAttribute indicates the category to associate the associated property or event with, when listing properties or events in a PropertyGrid control set to Categorized mode. If a CategoryAttribute has not been applied to a property or event, the PropertyGrid associates it with the Misc category. A new category can be created for any name by specifying the name of the category in the constructor for the CategoryAttribute.

The Category property indicates the name of the category that the attribute represents. The Category property also provides transparent localization of category names.

If you use category names other than the predefined names, and you want to localize your category names, you must override the GetLocalizedString method.

The CategoryAttribute class defines the following common categories:

For more information, see Extending Metadata Using Attributes.

The following example creates the MyImage property. The property has two attributes: a DescriptionAttribute and a CategoryAttribute.

[Description("The image associated with the control"),Category("Appearance")] 
 public Image MyImage {
    get {
       // Insert code here.
       return image1;
    }
    set {
       // Insert code here.
    }
 }

The next example gets the category for MyImage. First, the code gets a PropertyDescriptorCollection with all the properties for the object. Next, the code indexes into the PropertyDescriptorCollection to get MyImage. Then it returns the attributes for this property and saves them in the variable attributes.

The example then prints the category by retrieving CategoryAttribute from the AttributeCollection, and writing it to the console screen.

// Gets the attributes for the property.
 AttributeCollection attributes = 
    TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(this)["MyImage"].Attributes;

 // Prints the description by retrieving the CategoryAttribute.
 // from the AttributeCollection.
 CategoryAttribute myAttribute = 
    (CategoryAttribute)attributes[typeof(CategoryAttribute)];
 Console.WriteLine(myAttribute.Category);

.NET Framework

.NET Framework Client Profile

Windows 8 Release Preview, Windows Server 2012, Windows 7, Windows Vista SP2, Windows Server 2008 SP2, Windows Server 2008 R2 (Server Core Role supported with SP1 or later; Itanium not supported)

The .NET Framework does not support all versions of every platform. For a list of the supported versions, see .NET Framework System Requirements.

Reference