Question

i need an enum or something similiar to do something like this:

public enum MyStringEnum {
[StringValue(“Foo A”)] Foo = “A”,
[StringValue(“Foo B”)] Foo = “B” }

is this possible? my example, i return back a dataset with a value represented as either A,B,C,D,E .. i need a solution to return this as a string representation?

i guess the obvious would be to create an extension method or something which just had a switch statement in and return a string .. any other cleaner solutions?

regards,
dave

Answer 1

Would it be an option not to use enum and use structs instead?

struct FooEnum
{
    private int value;
    private string name;
    private FooEnum(int value, string name)
    {
        this.name = name;
        this.value = value;
    }

    public static readonly FooEnum A = new FooEnum(0, "Foo A");
    public static readonly FooEnum B = new FooEnum(1, "Foo B");
    public static readonly FooEnum C = new FooEnum(2, "Foo C");
    public static readonly FooEnum D = new FooEnum(3, "Foo D");

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return this.name;
    }

    //TODO explicit conversion to int etc.
}

You could then use FooEnum like an enum with an own ToString() overload:

FooEnum foo = FooEnum.A;
string s = foo.ToString(); //"Foo A"