Circular definition in a constant enum

Question

I\'m trying to create a constant of type Enum but I get a error.. My enum is:

public enum ActivityStatus
{
    Open = 1,
    Close = 2
}
         


        

Answer 1

You should not create a variable with the same name of a class or enum.

Maybe it will work if you specify the namespace, like :

public class CreateActivity
{
    public int Id;
    public const TheNamespace.ActivityStatus ActivityStatus =
        TheNamespace.ActivityStatus.ActivityStatus.Open;
}

Answer 2

Because the c# compiler intepretes the third ActivityStatus in:

public const ActivityStatus ActivityStatus = ActivityStatus.Open; 

as the name of the constant being defined instead than the name of the enumeration - hence the circular reference: you are definining a constant in terms of the constant itself.

In C# you can use the same name for members and types, and usually resolve ambiguities specifying the fully qualified names (i.e. adding the namespace), but in my experience it is not a good idea, it makes code confusing: the compiler can figure out which is which, but the poor human reading the code has an hard time figuring out if a certain name refers to a class or type or member.

Answer 3

If private usage only: You can change ActivityStatus to readonly field and move setting of default value to constructor.

If public usage: You can use property with getter only.

In most of the code analyzers additional namespace will be treated as redundance in your code.

Answer 4

To avoid from the Circular Definition Problem in C#, You can reference/call the variable/type/member etc with full qualified name like

Namespace..Member/Type/ etc

Hope you will fix the error by now.