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Example of a web form with name-value pairs. A name–value pair, also called an attribute–value pair, key–value pair, or field–value pair, is a fundamental data representation in computing systems and applications. Designers often desire an open-ended data structure that allows for future extension without modifying existing code or data.
In general, an attribute–value system may contain any kind of data, numeric or otherwise. An attribute–value system is distinguished from a simple "feature list" representation in that each feature in an attribute–value system may possess a range of values (e.g., feature P 1 below, which has domain of {0,1,2}), rather than simply being ...
For clarity, attributes should more correctly be considered metadata. An attribute is frequently and generally a property of a property. However, in actual usage, the term attribute can and is often treated as equivalent to a property depending on the technology being discussed. An attribute of an object usually consists of a name and a value.
Whether or not Foo.bar(5) invokes a function or simply sets an attribute is hidden from the caller. Likewise whether Foo.bar() simply retrieves the value of the attribute, or invokes a function to compute the value returned, is an implementation detail hidden from the caller. If the language uses the attribute syntax the syntax may look like this.
A car, for example, has an engine, a transmission, etc., and the engine has components such as cylinders. (The permissible substructure for a given class is defined within the system's attribute metadata, as discussed later. Thus, for example, the attribute "random-access-memory" could apply to the class "computer" but not to the class "engine".)
Unboxing is the operation of converting a value of a reference type (previously boxed) into a value of a value type. [15] Unboxing in C# requires an explicit type cast. Example:
Attribute values can be set-valued or atomic-valued. Set-valued attributes contain more than one atomic value. Examples are role and project. Atomic-valued attributes contain only one atomic value. Examples are clearance and sensitivity. Attributes can be compared to static values or to one another, thus enabling relation-based access control.
Custom attributes are used by CLI extensively. Windows Communication Framework uses attributes to define service contracts, ASP.NET uses these to expose methods as web services, LINQ to SQL uses them to define the mapping of classes to the underlying relational schema, Visual Studio uses them to group together properties of an object, the class developer indicates the category for the object's ...