Question

Is it possible to cast an enum to another object?

I have enumarated a list of blob containers. I’d like to implicitly cast the enum type into the named CloudBlobContainer

Here is an example of what i’ve tried

public static class BlobContainerCasts
{
    public static implicit operator CloudBlobContainer(EnumTypes.BlobContainerNames BlobContainerName)
    {
        return CloudStorageAccount.DevelopmentStorageAccount.CreateCloudBlobClient().GetContainerReference(Enum.GetName(typeof(EnumTypes.BlobContainerNames), BlobContainerName));
    }
}

Unfortunately, it won’t compile because it doesn’t respect the rule about User-defined conversion (it must convert to or from the enclosing type)

So, is there a way to do it without creating a method like this one?

public CloudBlobContainer GetBlobContainer(EnumTypes.BlobContainerNames BlobContainerName)
{...}

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

Based on breischl answere, here is the solution:

public static CloudBlobContainerExtensions {
    public static CloudBlobContainer GetContainer(this EnumTypes.BlobContainerNames BlobContainerName)
    {
        return CloudStorageAccount.DevelopmentStorageAccount.CreateCloudBlobClient().GetContainerReference(Enum.GetName(typeof(EnumTypes.BlobContainerNames), BlobContainerName));
    }
}

//elsewhere
var myContainer = EnumTypes.BlobContainerNames.somename.GetContainer();