Question

In c# I’m a little puzzled to understand Enum.

In my specif case I would need store constant value in a Name Value format like>

300 seconds = 5 minutes

At the moment I use this class.

• Would be possible to use Enum instead, so I the Enum class would look likes?
• Can I store in an Enum a Pair Values?

Could you provide me a sample of code?

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;

namespace MyWebSite.Models
{
    public class Reminders
    {
        private sortedDictionary<int, string> remindersValue = new SortedDictionary<int, string>();

        // We are settign the default values using the Costructor
        public Reminders()
        {
            remindersValue.Add(0, "None");
            remindersValue.Add(300, "5 minutes before");
            remindersValue.Add(900, "15 minutes before");
        }

        public SortedDictionary<int, string> GetValues()
        {
            return remindersValue;
        }

    }
}

Answer 1

You could use a Tuple<int, int> as dictionary key( at least with .NET >= 4 ).

But since you actually want to store a TimeSpan, use that as key.

private static Dictionary<TimeSpan, string> TimeSpanText = new Dictionary<TimeSpan, string>();

static Reminders()
{
    TimeSpanText.Add(TimeSpan.Zero, "None");
    TimeSpanText.Add(TimeSpan.FromMinutes( 5 ), "5 minutes before");
    TimeSpanText.Add(TimeSpan.FromMinutes( 15 ), "15 minutes before");
    TimeSpanText.Add(TimeSpan.FromMinutes( 30 ), "30 minutes before");
    TimeSpanText.Add(TimeSpan.FromHours( 1 ), "1 hour before");
    // ....
}

public static string DisplayName(TimeSpan ts)
{
    string text;
    if (TimeSpanText.TryGetValue(ts, out text))
        return text;
    else
         throw new ArgumentException("Invalid Timespan", "ts");
}

You can get the translation in this way:

var quarter = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(15);
string text = TimeSpanText[ quarter ];