Question

I have a number of enums and need to get them as List<string> objects in order to enumerate through them and hence made the GetEnumAsStrings<T>() method.

But it seems to me there would be an easier way.

Is there not a built-in method to get an enum like this into a List<string>?

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace TestEnumForeach2312
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            List<string> testModes = StringHelpers.GetEnumAsStrings<TestModes>();
            testModes.ForEach(s => Console.WriteLine(s));

            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }

    public static class StringHelpers
    {
        public static List<string> GetEnumAsStrings<T>()
        {
            List<string> enumNames = new List<string>();
            foreach (T item in Enum.GetValues(typeof(TestModes)))
            {
                enumNames.Add(item.ToString());
            }
            return enumNames;
        }
    }

    public enum TestModes
    {
        Test,
        Show,
        Wait,
        Stop
    }
}

Addendum:

Thanks everyone, very insightful. Since I ultimately needed this for Silverlight which doesn’t seem to have GetValues() or GetNames() for enums, I made this method which I created from this method:

public static List<string> ConvertEnumToListOfStrings<T>()
{
    Type enumType = typeof(T);
    List<string> strings = new List<string>();
    var fields = from field in enumType.GetFields()
                 where field.IsLiteral
                 select field;
    foreach (FieldInfo field in fields)
    {
        object value = field.GetValue(enumType);
        strings.Add(((T)value).ToString());
    }
    return strings;
}

Answer 1

You could do it as a one-liner using LINQ:

var enums = Enum.GetNames(typeof(TestModes)).ToList();

Now, keep in mind that GetNames returns an array of strings… so you might not even need ToList().

Edit:
There are ways to improve on your edited code. Here’s a simple one that uses ToList rather than explicitly instantiating the list:

public static List<string> ConvertEnumToListOfStrings<T>()
{
    Type enumType = typeof(T);
    var fields = from field in enumType.GetFields()
                 where field.IsLiteral
                 select ((T)field.GetValue(enumType)).ToString();
    return fields.ToList();    
}

And this next one is my personal preference. Why instantiate a list at all? You probably just need to iterate over the names, not add or remove them from a list. So just use IEnumerable and don’t bother building the list at all. Saves you one (admittedly small) iteration and the memory overhead of another object.

public static IEnumerable<string> GetEnumNames<T>()
{
    Type enumType = typeof(T);
    var fields = from field in enumType.GetFields()
                 where field.IsLiteral
                 select ((T)field.GetValue(enumType)).ToString();
    return fields;
}