Can a native visualiser modify the display of an item, based on the parameter name of its collection?

Question

In my company, the developers are regularly using CMapStringToStr objects, and always the pointers have the same type, for a particular parameter, e.g.

m_mapUsers  : every pointer is a CL_USER object
m_mapOthers : every pointer is a CL_OTHER object

I already have made a native visualiser for expanding the CMapStringToPtr in a reasonable readable way, as you can see in this excerpt:

m_mapUsers
  0: ["User1"]     0x12345     void*
  1: ["User2"]     0x23456     void*
  ...
m_mapOthers
  0: ["Other1"]    0x98765     void*
  1: ["Other2"]    0x98764     void*
  ...

I'd like to have the m_mapUsers and the m_mapOthers entries to be recognised, in order to get a result like the following:

m_mapUsers
  0: ["User1"]     {user=..., group=..., ...}     CL_USER
  1: ["User2"]     {user=..., group=..., ...}     CL_USER
  ...
m_mapOthers
  0: ["Other1"]    {reason=..., code=...}     CL_OTHER
  1: ["Other2"]    {reason=..., code=...}     CL_OTHER
  ...

Is this possible?

Werner Henze · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-09T17:23:47.337

The way I did this in my project is first to have a generic visualization for my linked list. This is what you already have.

<Type Name="MyLinkedList">
  <Expand>
    <LinkedListItems>
      <HeadPointer>this</HeadPointer>
      <NextPointer>next</NextPointer>
      <ValueNode>pData</ValueNode>
    </LinkedListItems>
  </Expand>
</Type>

Then I went to the classes where I knew how to interpret the void pointers, to which type I should cast them. So I created a Synthetic value with the same name as the member variable, changed the HeadPointer from this to the name of the member variable and at last did a type cast for the ValueNode.

<Type Name="MyClass">
  <Expand>
    <Synthetic Name="m_list">
      <Expand>
        <LinkedListItems>
          <HeadPointer>m_list</HeadPointer>
          <NextPointer>next</NextPointer>
          <ValueNode>(TheKnownType*)pData</ValueNode>
        </LinkedListItems>
      </Expand>
    </Synthetic>
  </Expand>
</Type>

The disadvantage is that I need to copy the code to multiple places, but it works.

Depending on the types that your pointers point (for example always CObject?) to it might also be possible to detect the type in the MyLinkedList and depending on the right Condition select what to display.

Can a native visualiser modify the display of an item, based on the parameter name of its collection?

1 Answers1