ReadableExpressions

ReadableExpressions provides extension methods and a Debugger Visualizer for readable, source-code versions of Expression Trees, as well as reflection objects like Type, FieldInfo, PropertyInfo, etc.

Debugger Visualizer

The Debugger Visualizer installer can be downloaded from Visual Studio Marketplace.

The visualizer has both Light and Dark themes:

...and output can be customised using various options:

ASP.NET Core 5 Known Issue

.NET 5 had a breaking change, which disables BinaryFormatter serialization by default. This has caused issues with the ReadableExpressions visualizers (and elsewhere) when debugging ASP.NET Core apps as the VS debugger uses BinaryFormatter to serialize objects before sending them to the visualizer.

The solution is to enable the BinaryFormatter in Debug only by adding the following to your ASP.NET Core csproj:

<PropertyGroup>
  <TargetFramework>net5.0</TargetFramework>
  <EnableUnsafeBinaryFormatterSerialization Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == 'Debug' ">
    true
  </EnableUnsafeBinaryFormatterSerialization>
</PropertyGroup>

Extension Methods

The extension methods are available on NuGet, and target .NET 3.5+ and .NETStandard 1.0+:

PM> Install-Package AgileObjects.ReadableExpressions

To translate an Expression, use:

using AgileObjects.ReadableExpressions;

string readable = myExpression.ToReadableString();

...this also works on DynamicLanguageRuntime expressions.

All code is licensed with the MIT licence. Check out the documentation for more!