You can use an attribute to specify metadata that you want attached to some element in your application. There are a number of predefined attributes in the .NET Framework, for various purposes. You can also define your own custom attributes.
You can find a list of all predefined attributes here.
Here are a few examples of predefined attributes that you might use:
- DebuggerDisplay – Tells Visual Studio how to display summary information about a type in a window that shows the current value of an object
- Obsolete – Indicates that a method is obsolete and should no longer be used (issues a warning at compile time)
- Serializable – Indicates that a type can be serialized (stored as a sequence of bytes).
- WebMethod – Indicates that a method can be used through an XML web service