Question

There has been talk of Enums in general violating Clean Code-principles, so I’m looking for people’s favorite Enum anti-patterns and alternative solutions for these.

For example I’ve seen code like this:

switch(enumValue) {
    case myEnum.Value1:
        // ...
        break;
    case myEnum.Value2:
        // ...
        break;
}

It’s one step better than switch-statements with magic strings, but this probably could have been solved better with a factory, a container or other pattern.

Or even old-school code like this:

if(enumValue == myEnum.Value1) {
   // ...
} else if (enumValue == myEnum.Value2) {
   // ...
}

What other anti-patterns and better implementations have you experienced with enums?

Answer 1

I think Enums are quite useful. I’ve written a few extensions for Enum that have added even more value to its use

First, there’s the Description extension method

public static class EnumExtensions
{
    public static string Description(this Enum value)
    {
        var entries = value.ToString().Split(ENUM_SEPERATOR_CHARACTER);
        var description = new string[entries.Length];
        for (var i = 0; i < entries.Length; i++)
        {
            var fieldInfo = value.GetType().GetField(entries[i].Trim());
            var attributes = (DescriptionAttribute[])fieldInfo.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DescriptionAttribute), false);
            description[i] = (attributes.Length > 0) ? attributes[0].Description : entries[i].Trim();
        }
        return String.Join(", ", description);
    }
    private const char ENUM_SEPERATOR_CHARACTER = ',';
}

This will allow me to define en enum like this:

 public enum MeasurementUnitType
 {
    [Description("px")]
    Pixels = 0,
    [Description("em")]
    Em = 1,
    [Description("%")]
    Percent = 2,
    [Description("pt")]
    Points = 3
 }

And get the label by doing this: var myLabel = rectangle.widthunit.Description() (eliminating any need for a switch statement).

This will btw return “px” if rectangle.widthunit = MeasurementUnitType.Pixels or it will return “px,em” if rectangle.widthunit = MeasurementUnitType.Pixels | MeasurementUnitType.Em.

Then, there is a

    public static IEnumerable<int> GetIntBasedEnumMembers(Type @enum)
    {
        foreach (FieldInfo fi in @enum.GetFields(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Static))
            yield return (int)fi.GetRawConstantValue();
    }

Which will let me traverse any enum with int based values and return the int values themselves.

I find these to be very useful in an allready useful concept.