Understanding Aspect Lifetime and Scope

An original feature of PostSharp is that aspects are instantiated at compile time. Most other frameworks instantiate aspects at run time.

Persistence of aspects between compile time and run time is achieved by serializing aspect instances into a binary resource stored in the transformed assembly. Therefore, you should carefully mark all aspect classes with the PSerializableAttribute custom attribute, and distinguish between serialized fields (typically initialized at compile-time and used at run-time) and non-serialized fields (typically used at run-time only or at compile-time only).

Scope of Aspects

PostSharp offers two kinds of aspect scopes: static (per-class) and per-instance.

Statically Scoped Aspects

With statically-scoped aspects, PostSharp creates one aspect instance for each element of code to which the aspect applies. The aspect instance is stored in a static field and is shared among all instances of the target class.

In generic types, the aspect instance has not exactly the same scope as static fields. Consider the following piece of code:

public class GenericClass<T>
{
  static T f;

  [Trace]
  public void void SetField(T value) { f = value; }
}

public class Program
{
   public static void Main()
   {
      GenericClass<int>.SetField(1);
      GenericClass<long>.SetField(2);
   }
}

In this program, there are two instances of the static field f (one for GenericClass<int>, the second for GenericClass<long>) but only a single instance of the aspect Trace.

Instance-Scoped Aspects

Instance-scoped aspects have the same scope (instance or static) as the element of code to which they are applied. If an instance-scoped aspect is applied to a static member, it will have static scope. However, if it is applied to an instance member or to a class, it will have the same lifetime as the class instance: an aspect instance will be created whenever the class is instantiated, and the aspect instance will be garbage-collectable at the same time as the class instance.

Instance-scoped aspects are implemented according to the "quoteInline": the aspect instance created at compile time serves as a prototype, and is cloned at run-time whenever the target class is instantiated.

Instance-scoped aspects must implement the interface IInstanceScopedAspect. Any aspect may be made instance-scoped. The following code is a typical implementation of the interface IInstanceScopedAspect:

object IInstanceScopedAspect.CreateInstance( AdviceArgs adviceArgs )
{
  return this.MemberwiseClone();
}

void IInstanceScopedAspect.RuntimeInitializeInstance()
{
}

Steps in the Lifetime of an Aspect Instance

The following table summarizes the different steps of the aspect instance lifetime:

Phase	Step	Description
Compile-Time	Instantiation	PostSharp creates a new instance of the aspect for every target to which it applies. If the aspect has been applied using a multicast custom attribute (MulticastAttribute), there will be one aspect instance for each matching element of code. When the aspect is given as a custom attribute or a multicast custom attribute, each custom attribute instance is instantiated using the same mechanism as the Common Language Runtime (CLR) does: PostSharp calls the appropriate constructor and sets the properties and/or fields with the appropriate values. For instance, when you use the construction `[Trace(Category="FileManager")]`, PostSharp calls the default constructor and the `Category` property setter.
	Validation	PostSharp validates the aspect by calling the `CompileTimeValidate` aspect method. See Validating Aspect Usage for details.
	Compile-Time Initialization	PostSharp invokes the `CompileTimeInitialize` aspect method. This method may be overridden by concrete aspect classes in order to perform some expensive computations that do not depend on runtime conditions. The name of the element to which the custom attribute instance is applied is always passed to this method.
	Serialization	After the aspect instances have all been created and initialized, PostSharp serializes them into a binary stream. This stream is stored inside the new assembly as a managed resource.
Run-Time	Deserialization	Before the first aspect must be executed, the aspect framework deserializes the binary stream that has been stored in a managed resource during post-compilation. At this point, there is still one aspect instance per target class.
	Per-Class Runtime Initialization	Once all custom attribute instances are deserialized, we call for each of them the `RuntimeInitialize` method. But this time we pass as an argument the real System.Reflection object to which it is applied.
	Per-Instance Runtime Initialization	This step applies only to instance-scoped aspects when they have been applied to an instance member. When a class is instantiated, the aspect framework creates an aspect instance by invoking the method CreateInstance(AdviceArgs) of the prototype aspect instance. After the new aspect instance has been set up, the aspect framework invokes the RuntimeInitializeInstance().
	Advice Execution	Finally, advices (methods such as OnEntry(MethodExecutionArgs)) are executed.

Scope of Aspects

Statically Scoped Aspects

Instance-Scoped Aspects

Steps in the Lifetime of an Aspect Instance

See Also