Question

Almost all the applications I worked on involve some look-up values. For example, a lot of times a list of languages ( English, French, etc…) need to be displayed on the WebForm for user to choose.

The common data structure for such look up values include an integer Id and a string as name. Since these look-up values are used so frequently, and they are unlikely to be changed. Most of time, instead of grabbing them from database, I just define a global enum in C# like this

enum Language : int { English = 1, French = 2}

I’ve been handling look-up values like this for years now. I knew it may not be the best way to handle them. For example, every time a new language is added to the system, somebody needs to remember to update that enum.

I guess this is a very common scenario, just wondering how you guys handle this type of look-up values.

Thanks,

Answer 1

I usually put them int he database anyway, because you never know if and when they’ll need to change. There have been times when – by design – I know that the list will not change, and for those, I will use enums instead. All other cases, I will use a database table.