Question

I have the following code

[DataContract]
public enum StatusType
{
    [EnumMember(Value = "A")]
    All,
    [EnumMember(Value = "I")]
    InProcess,
    [EnumMember(Value = "C")]
    Complete,
}

I’d like to do the following:

 var s = "C";
 StatusType status = SerializerHelper.ToEnum<StatusType>(s);   //status is now StatusType.Complete
 string newString = SerializerHelper.ToEnumString<StatusType>(status);   //newString is now "C"

I’ve done the second part using DataContractSerializer (see code below), but it seems like a lot of work.

Am I missing something obvious? Ideas? Thanks.

    public static string ToEnumString<T>(T type)
    {
        string s;
        using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
        {
            var ser = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T));
            ser.WriteObject(ms, type);
            ms.Position = 0;
            var sr = new StreamReader(ms);
            s = sr.ReadToEnd();
        }
        using (var xml = new XmlTextReader(s, XmlNodeType.Element, null))
        {
            xml.MoveToContent();
            xml.Read();
            return xml.Value;
        }
    }

Answer 1

Here is my proposition – it should give you the idea on how to do this (check also Getting attributes of Enum's value):

public static string ToEnumString<T>(T type)
{
    var enumType = typeof (T);
    var name = Enum.GetName(enumType, type);
    var enumMemberAttribute = ((EnumMemberAttribute[])enumType.GetField(name).GetCustomAttributes(typeof(EnumMemberAttribute), true)).Single();
    return enumMemberAttribute.Value;
}

public static T ToEnum<T>(string str)
{
    var enumType = typeof(T);
    foreach (var name in Enum.GetNames(enumType))
    {
        var enumMemberAttribute = ((EnumMemberAttribute[])enumType.GetField(name).GetCustomAttributes(typeof(EnumMemberAttribute), true)).Single();
        if (enumMemberAttribute.Value == str) return (T)Enum.Parse(enumType, name);
    }
    //throw exception or whatever handling you want or
    return default(T);
}