Call Hierarchy

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Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2015. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

Call Hierarchy enables you to navigate through your code by displaying all calls to and from a selected method, property, or constructor. This enables you to better understand how code flows and to evaluate the effects of changes to code. You can examine several levels of code to view complex chains of method calls and additional entry points to the code, which enables you to explore all possible execution paths.

Call Hierarchy is available at design time, unlike the call stack that is displayed by the debugger.

Using Call Hierarchy

To display the Call Hierarchy window, right-click the name of a method, property, or constructor call, and then click View Call Hierarchy.

The member name appears in a tree view pane in the Call Hierarchy window. If you expand the member node, Calls Tomember name and Calls Frommember name subnodes appear. The following illustration shows these nodes in the Call Hierarchy window.

Call Hierarchy with one node open Call Hierarchy window

  • If you expand the Calls To node, all members that call the selected member are displayed.

  • If you expand the Calls From node, all members that are called by the selected member are displayed.

    You can then expand each of these subnode members into Calls To and Calls From nodes. This enables you to navigate into the stack of callers, as shown in the following illustration.

    Call Hierarchy Multiple Nodes Open Call Hierarchy window

    For members that are defined as either virtual or abstract, an Overrides method name node appears. For interface members, an Implements method name node appears. These expandable nodes appear at the same level as the Calls To and Calls From nodes.

    The Search Scope box on the toolbar contains choices for My Solution, Current Project, and Current Document.

    When you select a child member in the Call Hierarchy tree view pane:

  • The Call Hierarchy details pane displays all lines of code in which that child member is called from the parent member.

  • The Code Definition Window, if open, displays the code for the selected member. This window is available in C# and C++. For more information about this window, see Viewing the Structure of Code.

Note

Call Hierarchy does not find method group references, which includes places where a method is added as an event handler or is assigned to a delegate. To find all references to a method, you can use the Find All References command.

Shortcut Menu Items

The following table describes several shortcut menu options that are available when you right-click a node in the tree view pane.

Context Menu Item Description
Add As New Root Adds the selected node to the tree view pane as a new root node. This enables you to focus your attention on a specific subtree.
Remove Root Removes the selected root node from the tree view pane. This option is available only from a root node.

You can also use the Remove Root toolbar button to remove the selected root node.
Go To Definition Runs the Go To Definition command on the selected node. This navigates to the original definition for a member call or variable definition.

To run the Go To Definition command, you can also double-click the selected node or press F12 on the selected node.
Find All References Runs the Find All References command on the selected node. This finds all the lines of code in your project that reference a class or member.

You can also use SHIFT+F12 to run the Find All References command on the selected node.
Copy Copies the contents of the selected node (but not its subnodes).
Refresh Collapses the selected node so that re-expanding it displays current information.