Associating Additional Information with .NET Enum

Question

My question is best illustrated with an example.

Suppose I have the enum:

public enum ArrowDirection
{
    North,
    South,
    East,
    West
}
         


        

Answer 1

I've blogged about it here.

Try out something like this with Attributes.

  public enum Status {

    [Status(Description = "Not Available")]      

    Not_Available = 1,      

    [Status(Description = "Available For Game")] 

    Available_For_Game = 2,      

    [Status(Description = "Available For Discussion")] 

    Available_For_Discussion = 3,

  }

  public class StatusEnumInfo {

    private static StatusAttribute[] edesc; 

    public static String GetDescription(object e)

    {

      System.Reflection.FieldInfo f = e.GetType().GetField(e.ToString()); 

      StatusEnumInfo.edesc = f.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(StatusAttribute), false) as StatusAttribute[]; 

      if (StatusEnumInfo.edesc != null && StatusEnumInfo.edesc.Length == 1)         

        return StatusEnumInfo.edesc[0].Description; 

      else         

        return String.Empty;

    } 

    public static object GetEnumFromDesc(Type t, string desc)

    {

      Array x = Enum.GetValues(t); 

      foreach (object o in x) {

        if (GetDescription(o).Equals(desc)) {

          return o;

        }

      } return String.Empty;

    }

  }

  public class StatusAttribute : Attribute {

    public String Description { get; set; }

  }



  public class Implemenation {

    public void Run()

    {

      Status statusEnum = (Status)StatusEnumInfo.GetEnumFromDesc(typeof(Status), "Not Available"); 

      String statusString = StatusEnumInfo.GetDescription(Status.Available_For_Discussion);

    }

  }

Instead of Description, use your custom Property