Enum “Inheritance”

Question

I have an enum in a low level namespace. I\'d like to provide a class or enum in a mid level namespace that \"inherits\" the low level enum.

namespace low
{
         


        

Answer 1

The solutions above using classes with int constants lack type-safety. I.e. you could invent new values actually not defined in the class. Furthermore it is not possible for example to write a method taking one of these classes as input.

You would need to write

public void DoSomethingMeaningFull(int consumeValue) ...

However, there is a class based solution of the old days of Java, when there were no enums available. This provides an almost enum-like behaviour. The only caveat is that these constants cannot be used within a switch-statement.

public class MyBaseEnum
{
    public static readonly MyBaseEnum A = new MyBaseEnum( 1 );
    public static readonly MyBaseEnum B = new MyBaseEnum( 2 );
    public static readonly MyBaseEnum C = new MyBaseEnum( 3 );

    public int InternalValue { get; protected set; }

    protected MyBaseEnum( int internalValue )
    {
        this.InternalValue = internalValue;
    }
}

public class MyEnum : MyBaseEnum
{
    public static readonly MyEnum D = new MyEnum( 4 );
    public static readonly MyEnum E = new MyEnum( 5 );

    protected MyEnum( int internalValue ) : base( internalValue )
    {
        // Nothing
    }
}

[TestMethod]
public void EnumTest()
{
    this.DoSomethingMeaningful( MyEnum.A );
}

private void DoSomethingMeaningful( MyBaseEnum enumValue )
{
    // ...
    if( enumValue == MyEnum.A ) { /* ... */ }
    else if (enumValue == MyEnum.B) { /* ... */ }
    // ...
}