Question

Consider this code:

public static class PredefinedStrings
{
    public const string Golf = "Golfing";
    public const string Basketball = "Basketball";
    public const string HoolaHoops = "Hulahoops";
}

public class Sports 
{ 
   public string Name { get; set; }
}

How can I force the Name property of the Sports class to use only one of the PredifinedStrings?

Edit: I want to avoid using enums since the values always represent a string.

Answer 1

I would suggest using an enum instead:

public enum SportName { Golfing, Basketball };

public class Sports 
{ 
   public SportName Name { get; set; }
}

A typical assignment then would be

var s = new Sports();
s.Name = SportName.Basketball;

Even then it is not enforced since you still could do Name = (SportName)42; but it is much harder to get wrong – but you could certainly put custom logic into the setter to filter out these invalid values.

Also if you need the string representation of your enum value just use ToString() on it.