Question

Does anyone have a more elegant solution to parsing enums? The following just seems like a mess to me.

UserType userType = (UserType)Enum.Parse(typeof(UserType), iUserType.ToString());

Answer 1

I often make a generic helper for it:

public static T ParseEnum<T>(string value) where T:struct
{
    return (T)Enum.Parse(typeof(T), value);
}

You can combine that with Jon Skeet’s Unstrained Melody (or any other post IL processor) to get a proper type constraint on an enum, but that is optional.

Then you can use it like this:

var enumValue = ParseEnum<UserType>(iUserType.ToString());

---

The .NET Framework 4.0 also comes with Enum.TryParse which also offers a similar syntax, and offers a way to handle if the parse fails. For example:

UserType userType;
if (Enum.TryParse<UserType>(iUserType.ToString(), out userType))
{
    //Yay! Parse succeeded. The userType variable has the value.
}
else
{
    //Oh noes! The parse failed!
}