TEAM.Commons: Formatting objects for human reading

This is the 3rd of several posts about TEAM.Common, a set of functionality I use in every project and that I'd like to share. The index is here:http://rodolfograve.blogspot.com/2010/09/teamcommons-introduction.html

Converting an arbitrary object into a human-readable string is something I need all the time, specially for logging.

TEAM.Commons has the PrettyFormat() extension method for the object class that performs this task. For an instance of a class like this:

public class CyclicClass
{
    public int IntProperty { get; set; }
    public SimpleClass SimpleProperty { get; set; }
    public CyclicClass CyclicProperty { get; set; }
}

The output of .PrettyFormat() would be:

CyclicClass {
IntProperty='7',
SimpleProperty='SimpleClass {
 StringProperty='My string',
 IntProperty='5',
 DateProperty='3/2/2010 12:00:00 AM',
}',
CyclicProperty='CyclicClass {
 nIntProperty='7',
 SimpleProperty='SimpleClass {
  -- EXCLUDED (Too deep) --
 }',
  CyclicProperty='CyclicClass {
   -- EXCLUDED (Too deep) --
  }',
 }',
}

As you can see, by default it will go down only 1 level . Properties beyond that level will be rendered as "-- EXCLUDED (Too deep) --". There is an overload to specify an arbitrary deepness: .PrettyFormat(10).

The PrettyFormat method handles a lot of special cases: enum, IEnumerable, DateTimes, string, int, etc, providing an appropiate format for these types. You don't want to see an string as:

String {
 Length=14,
 Empty=...
}

but rather as:

The value of my string

Thanks to the "magic" of extension methods, you can even call it on null references, saving a lot of "if" instructions:

object o = null;
o.PrettyFormat();

The output of the former code is: <NULL>

Remember, you can get all this code for free at bitbucket: http://bitbucket.org/rodolfograve/team.commons/overview

Check it out to get ideas, or simply use it as it is. It's working out for me and my team.