Question

I have created an Enum and want to read the text value from it. The Enum is as below:

public enum MethodID
{
    /// <summary>
    /// The type of request being done. Inquiry.
    /// </summary>
    [EnumTextValue("01")]
    Inquiry,

    /// <summary>
    /// The type of request being done. Update
    /// </summary>
    [EnumTextValue("02")]
    Update,
}  

Now I want to assign the value of enum to a request object methodID. I tried the following code, but it didnt worked:

request.ID = Enum.GetName(typeof(MethodID), MethodID.Inquiry);  

What I want is to assign the value “01” to the data member of request data contract (request.ID) that I will fetch from the Enum MethodID. How will I get this? Please help

Answer 1

If you want just to get int value then you can declare enum as

public enum MethodID
{
    [EnumTextValue("01")]
    Inquiry = 1,

    [EnumTextValue("02")]
    Update = 2,
}

And then use casting to int:

ind id = (int)MethodID.Inquiry;

If you want to get string value from attribute then this is the static helper method

///<summary>
/// Allows the discovery of an enumeration text value based on the <c>EnumTextValueAttribute</c>
///</summary>
/// <param name="e">The enum to get the reader friendly text value for.</param>
/// <returns><see cref="System.String"/> </returns>
public static string GetEnumTextValue(Enum e)
{
    string ret = "";
    Type t = e.GetType();
    MemberInfo[] members = t.GetMember(e.ToString());
    if (members.Length == 1)
    {
        object[] attrs = members[0].GetCustomAttributes(typeof (EnumTextValueAttribute), false);
        if (attrs.Length == 1)
        {
            ret = ((EnumTextValueAttribute)attrs[0]).Text;
        }
    }
    return ret;
}