Question

I’ve read a few SO posts and it seems most basic operation is missing.

public enum LoggingLevel
{
    Off = 0,
    Error = 1,
    Warning = 2,
    Info = 3,
    Debug = 4,
    Trace = 5
};

if (s == "LogLevel")
{
    _log.LogLevel = (LoggingLevel)Convert.ToInt32("78");
    _log.LogLevel = (LoggingLevel)Enum.Parse(typeof(LoggingLevel), "78");
    _log.WriteDebug(_log.LogLevel.ToString());
}

This causes no exceptions, it’s happy to store 78. Is there a way to validate a value going into an enum?

Answer 1

Check out Enum.IsDefined

Usage:

if(Enum.IsDefined(typeof(MyEnum), value))
    MyEnum a = (MyEnum)value; 

This is the example from that page:

using System;    
[Flags] public enum PetType
{
   None = 0, Dog = 1, Cat = 2, Rodent = 4, Bird = 8, Reptile = 16, Other = 32
};

public class Example
{
   public static void Main()
   {
      object value;     
      // Call IsDefined with underlying integral value of member.
      value = 1;
      Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", value, Enum.IsDefined(typeof(PetType), value));
      // Call IsDefined with invalid underlying integral value.
      value = 64;
      Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", value, Enum.IsDefined(typeof(PetType), value));
      // Call IsDefined with string containing member name.
      value = "Rodent";
      Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", value, Enum.IsDefined(typeof(PetType), value));
      // Call IsDefined with a variable of type PetType.
      value = PetType.Dog;
      Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", value, Enum.IsDefined(typeof(PetType), value));
      value = PetType.Dog | PetType.Cat;
      Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", value, Enum.IsDefined(typeof(PetType), value));
      // Call IsDefined with uppercase member name.      
      value = "None";
      Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", value, Enum.IsDefined(typeof(PetType), value));
      value = "NONE";
      Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", value, Enum.IsDefined(typeof(PetType), value));
      // Call IsDefined with combined value
      value = PetType.Dog | PetType.Bird;
      Console.WriteLine("{0:D}: {1}", value, Enum.IsDefined(typeof(PetType), value));
      value = value.ToString();
      Console.WriteLine("{0:D}: {1}", value, Enum.IsDefined(typeof(PetType), value));
   }
}

The example displays the following output:

//       1: True
//       64: False
//       Rodent: True
//       Dog: True
//       Dog, Cat: False
//       None: True
//       NONE: False
//       9: False
//       Dog, Bird: False