Question

I created Enum ToFrendlyString function for my enums, but i cant use in Linq.

 public enum MyEnum
    {

        Queued = 0,           
        [Description("In progress")]
        In_progress = 2,            
        [Description("No answer")]
        No_answer = 6,

    }



  public static class EnumToFrendlyString
    {

        public static string ToFrendlyString(this Enum value)
        {
            return value.GetEnumDescription();
        }


        public static string GetEnumDescription(this Enum value)
        {
            FieldInfo fi = value.GetType().GetField(value.ToString());

            var attributes =
                (DescriptionAttribute[])fi.GetCustomAttributes(
                    typeof(DescriptionAttribute),
                    false);

            if (attributes.Length > 0)
                return attributes[0].Description;

            return value.ToString();
        }
    }

When i try to use this function in Linq, im getting error

  var res = collection.AsQueryable().Where(p => p.UserID == UserID).OrderByDescending(p=> p.DateCreated).Select(p => new MyClass
                {                          
                     Date = p.DateCreated.ToString(),
                     Status = p.Status.ToFrendlyString(),                        
                }).Take(10).ToList();

If i make another function in same class, like

 private string MyStatusToString(MyEnum status)
       {
           return status.ToFrendlyString();
       }

and change my Linq to use this function, then everything works.

Error

Expression of type 'DAL.MyEnum' cannot be used for parameter of type 'System.Enum' of method 'System.String ToFrendlyString(System.Enum)'

Answer 1

I’m not sure you can use Enum as the Type for an extension method like that – try this instead. I’ve taken the liberty of tidying the code up a bit, feel free to ignore those changes 🙂

public static class EnumToFrendlyString
{
    public static string ToFrendlyString<T>(this T value)
        where T : struct
    {
        return value.GetEnumDescription();
    }

    public static string GetEnumDescription<T>(this T value)
        where T : struct
    {
        return EnumDescriptionCache<T>.Descriptions[value];
    }

    private static class EnumDescriptionCache<T>
        where T : struct
    {
        public static Dictionary<T, string> Descriptions =
            Enum.GetValues(typeof(T))
                .Cast<T>()
                .ToDictionary(
                    value => value,
                    value => value.GetEnumDescriptionForCache());
    }

    private static string GetEnumDescriptionForCache<T>(this T value)
        where T : struct
    {
        if (!typeof(T).IsEnum)
        {
            throw new ArgumentException("Only use with enums", "value");
        }

        var descriptionAttribute = typeof(T)
            .GetField(value.ToString())
            .GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DescriptionAttribute), false)
            .Cast<DescriptionAttribute>()
            .FirstOrDefault();

        return (descriptionAttribute != null)
            ? descriptionAttribute.Description
            : value.ToString();
    }
}

I’ve added a private, generic class to cache the descriptions for your enum members to avoid lots of runtime use of reflection. It looks a bit odd popping in and out of the class to first cache then retrieve the values, but it should work fine 🙂

The warning I gave in this answer still applies – the enum value passed to the dictionary isn’t validated, so you could crash it by calling ((MyEnum)5367372).ToFrendlyString().