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Enum from string, int, etc
(7 answers)
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I am working on WCF service and want to return preference key as enum rather than string.
How to make enum of preferencekey column which is string type in best optimized way?
You should use the enum.Parse Method:
MyEnum myEnum = (MyEnum)Enum.Parse(typeof(MyEnum), enumString);
I found the code snippet.
Rohit,
The value of preferenceKey could not easily be converted to an enum as you would expect. The strings could be parsed using Enum.Parse() method however the enum names must be different than what you have in the database. The problems are
Your string starts with a number
Your string contains the - characters
Now that being said you could design a different approach to your naming convetion of an enum as an example (I dont like this example personally but might work).
First define a new attribute called EnumName this attribute will be used to decorate your enums with the name that you expect from the database. Such as
[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Field, AllowMultiple = true)]
public sealed class EnumNameAttribute : Attribute
{
readonly string name;
public EnumNameAttribute(string name)
{
this.name = name;
}
public string Name { get { return this.name; } }
}
The next step will be to define your enums (what I dont like is the names)
public enum Preferences
{
[EnumName("6E-SF-TYPE")]
SIX_E_SF_TYPE = 0,
[EnumName("6E-SF-VALUE")]
SIX_E_SF_VALUE = 1
}
Simple enough, we have our enum with each item decorated with the EnumName attribute. The next step will be to create a method to parse the enum based on the string from the database.
public static class EnumNameParser
{
public static Preferences ParseString(string enumString)
{
var members = typeof(Preferences).GetMembers()
.Where(x => x.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(EnumNameAttribute), false).Length > 0)
.Select(x =>
new
{
Member = x,
Attribute = x.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(EnumNameAttribute), false)[0] as EnumNameAttribute
});
foreach(var item in members)
{
if (item.Attribute.Name.Equals(enumString))
return (Preferences)Enum.Parse(typeof(Preferences), item.Member.Name);
}
throw new Exception("Enum member " + enumString + " was not found.");
}
}
This method simply takes an input stream, evaluates all the EnumNameAttributes and returns the first match (or exception if not found).
Then this can be called such as.
string enumString = "6E-SF-TYPE";
var e = EnumNameParser.ParseString(enumString);
Now if you want to take the enum and get the name for the database you can extend your helper method with
public static string GetEnumName(this Preferences preferences)
{
var memInfo = typeof(Preferences).GetMember(preferences.ToString());
if (memInfo != null && memInfo.Length > 0)
{
object[] attrs = memInfo[0].GetCustomAttributes(typeof(EnumNameAttribute), false);
if (attrs != null && attrs.Length > 0)
return ((EnumNameAttribute)attrs[0]).Name;
}
throw new Exception("No enum name attribute defined");
}
I really would recommend storing the numerical values rather than the text values in the database. If you want the text values in the database too then add a table for it. Regardless, the Enum.Parse and .TryParse methods will convert a String and the .ToObject method will convert either text or numbers.
How to make enum of preferencekey column which is string type in best optimized way
Well i am afraid you cannot use your preference key as enum for 2 reasons.
your preference key is starting with integer values making it an in-valid identifier.
it also contains - which is not allowed either.
However, if you are able to convert your preference key to some valid identifiers then you can do this.
i would recomment using Enum.TryParse for parsing because
TryParse(String, Boolean, TEnum) is identical to the Parse(Type, String, Boolean) method, except that instead of throwing an exception, it returns false if the conversion fails. It eliminates the need for exception handling when parsing the string representation of an enumeration value.
Something like this
string testingString = "Test1";
SomeEnum result;
if (Enum.TryParse(testingString, out result))
{
Console.WriteLine("Success");
}
or if case sensitivity doesn't matter to you. Then you can use the overload like this
if (Enum.TryParse(testingString,true, out result))
Console.WriteLine("Success");
where SomeEnum is
public enum SomeEnum
{
Test1 = 1,
Test2 = 2
}
The simples way to do this would be:
1) create an enum representing all possible preference key values, but add a 'invalid' with value -1.
enum PreferenceKey
{
INVALID = -1,
SIX_E_SF_TYPE = 0,
SIX_E_SF_VALUE = 1,
...
}
2) create a list of strings containing the string representations of all preference key values in the same order as the enum.
private List<string> strings = new List<string> {"6E-SF-TYPE", "6E-SF-VALUE", ...};
3) Lookup the column value in the list of strings and cast the position to the enum.
If the column value cannot be found in the list of strings, IndexOf will return -1, which is the 'invalid' value.
PreferenceKey key = (PreferenceKey) strings.IndexOf(preferenceKeyColumnValue);
Related
I've got a enum type defined in my C# code that corresponds to all possible values for the NetConnectionStatus field in Win32_NetworkAdapter WMI table, as documented here.
The documentation shows that the integers 0 through 12 each have a unique status name, but then all integers between 13 and 65,535 are lumped into one bucket called "Other." So here's my code:
[Serializable]
public enum NetConnectionStatus
{
Disconnected = 0,
Connecting = 1,
Connected = 2,
Disconnecting = 3,
HardwareNotPresent = 4,
HardwareDisabled = 5,
HardwareMalfunction = 6,
MediaDisconnected = 7,
Authenticating = 8,
AuthenticationSucceeded = 9,
AuthenticationFailed = 10,
InvalidAddress = 11,
CredentialsRequired = 12,
Other
}
This works fine for the values that are not Other. For instance, I can do this:
var result = (NetConnectionStatus) 2;
Assert.AreEqual(NetConnectionStatus.Connected, result);
But for anything in that higher numeric range, it doesn't work so great. I would like it if I could do this:
var result = (NetConnectionStatus) 20;
Assert.AreEqual(NetConnectionStatus.Other, result);
But right now that result variable gets assigned the literal value 20 instead of Other. Is there some out-of-the-box way of accomplishing this, something akin to Parse() but for integers instead of strings, or perhaps some special attribute I'm unaware of? I would prefer to not write my own wrapper method for this if there is already a good way to accomplish this.
If you have a string value, then the closest thing I can think of is to use Enum.TryParse:
NetConnectionStatus result;
if (Enum.TryParse(stringValue, out result) == false)
result = NetConnectionStatus.Other;
For an integer value that you're casting, you can use:
result = (NetConnectionStatus)integerValue;
if (Enum.GetValues(typeof(NetConnectionStatus)).Contains(result) == false)
result = NetConnectionStatus.Other;
Not really ideal, but in C# enums aren't much more than fancy names for integral values, so it's valid to stuff an integer value not in the defined values of the enums into a value of that enum type.
This solution will handle negative numbers, or cases where you have gaps in your enum values more elegantly than doing numerical comparisons.
it would be nice but no. How about
var result = (NetConnectionStatus) 20;
Assert.IsTrue(result >= (int)NetConnectionStatus.Other);
.NET does not such thing as a "any other" enumeration value bucket. Technically, enumeration (enum) is a pretty set of named constants of some underlying type (which is one of following: sbyte, short, int, long and their unsigned counterparts). You can cast an enum value to/from a corresponding type without any losses, as in this example:
enum TestEnum:int // Explicitly stating a type.
{
OnlyElement=0
}
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// Console.WriteLine implicitly calls ToString of the TestEnum.OnlyElement.
Console.WriteLine("OnlyElement == {0}", TestEnum.OnlyElement);
//TestEnum.OnlyElement equals to 0, as demonstrated by this casting:
Console.WriteLine("(int)OnlyElement == {0}", (int)TestEnum.OnlyElement);
//We can do it in reverse...
Console.WriteLine("(TestEnum)0 == ",(TestEnum)0);
// But what happens when we try to cast a value, which is not
// representable by any of enum's named constants,
// into value of enum in question? No exception is thrown
// whatsoever: enum variable simply holds that value, and,
// having no named constant to associate it with, simply returns
// that value when attempting to "ToString"ify it:
Console.WriteLine("(TestEnum)5 == {0}", (TestEnum)5); //prints "(TestEnum)5 == 5".
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
I'd like to repeat it again, enum in .NET is simply a value of the underlying type with some nice decorations like overriden ToString method and flags checking (look here or here if you want to know more about flags). You cannot have an integer with only 14 values like "0..12 and everything else", and so you cannot have such enum. In your example, NetConnectionStatus.Other simply receives single literal value (I assume it would most probably be '13', as the next available positive value of underlying type - however it actually depends on the compiler) as any other enumeration constant would do if not specified explicitly - and, obviously, it does not become a bucket.
However, there are options to achieve simple equation checks for integers/bytes/shorts/longs - and enums alike. Consider this extension method:
static bool IsOther(this NetConnectionStatus A)
{
return (A < (NetConnectionStatus)0) || (A > (NetConnectionStatus)12);
}
Now you can have a simple assertion like this:
var result = (NetConnectionStatus)10;
Trace.Assert(result.IsOther()); //No assertion is triggered; result is NetConnectionStatus.AuthenticationFailed
and
var result = (NetConnectionStatus)20;
Trace.Assert(result.IsOther()); //Assertion failed; result is undefined!
(Of course you can replace IsOther method with IsNotOther, overload it and pretty much anything else you could do with a method.)
Now there is one more thing. Enum class itself contains a method called IsDefined, which allows you to avoid checks for specific enum's value boundaries (<0, >12), therefore preventing unwanted bugs in case enum values would ever be added/removed, at the small performance cost of unboxing and checking each value in enum for a match (I'm not sure how this works under the hood though, I hope these checks are optimized). So your method would look like this:
static bool IsOther(NetConnectionStatus A)
{
return !Enum.IsDefined(typeof(NetConnectionStatus), A);
}
(However, concluding from enum's name, it seems like you want to make a network application/server, and for these performance might be of very great importance - but most probably I'm just being paranoid and this will not be your application's bottleneck. Stability is much more of concern, and, unless you experience real troubles with performance, it is considered to be much better practice to enable as much stability&safety&portability as possible. Enum.IsDefined is much more understandable, portable and stable than the explicit boundaries checking.)
Hope that helps!
Thanks everyone for the replies. As confirmed by all of you, there is indeed no way to do this out-of-the-box. For the benefit of others I thought I'd post the (custom) code I ended up writing. I wrote an extension method that utilizes a custom attribute on the enum value that I called [CatchAll].
public class CatchAll : Attribute { }
public static class EnumExtensions
{
public static T ToEnum<T, U>(this U value) where T : struct, IConvertible where U : struct, IComparable, IConvertible, IFormattable, IComparable<U>, IEquatable<U>
{
var result = (T)Enum.ToObject(typeof(T), value);
var values = Enum.GetValues(typeof(T)).Cast<T>().ToList();
if (!values.Contains(result))
{
foreach (var enumVal in from enumVal in values
let info = typeof(T).GetField(enumVal.ToString())
let attrs = info.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CatchAll), false)
where attrs.Length == 1
select enumVal)
{
result = enumVal;
break;
}
}
return result;
}
}
So then I just have to apply that [CatchAll] attribute to the Other value in the enum definition. Then I can do things like this:
int value = 13;
var result = value.ToEnum<NetConnectionStatus, int>();
Assert.AreEqual(NetConnectionStatus.Other, result);
And this:
ushort value = 20;
result = value.ToEnum<NetConnectionStatus, ushort>();
Assert.AreEqual(NetConnectionStatus.Other, result);
There are a few other Questions on how to convert Enums and what happens if the value parsed is out-of-range, like in:
public enum SomeTypes
{
SomeType1 = 1,
SomeType2 = 2,
SomeType3 = 3
}
public class SomeClass
{
...
var inRange = (SomeTypes) 1;
var outOfRange = (SomeTypes) 5;
...
}
Going out-of-range will not produce any error.
But I found the hard way that if you try to serialize-deserialize an enum with an out-of-range value you'll get weird errors. For example, I was getting something like
"error parsing the message or timeout exceeded"
which kept me looking for other reasons than the enum out-of-range.
Suggestions to handle this are by the means of the Enum.IsDefined. That seems to work quite nicely, but then there's this rather bold warning on msdn:
"Do not use System.Enum.IsDefined(System.Type,System.Object) for enumeration range checks as it is based on the runtime type of the enumeration, which can change from version to version."
So, my question is, can we safely use Enum.IsDefined or what is the correct way to check if the value of an enum is out-of-range without using the Enum.IsDefined?
Use Enum.GetValues():
public bool IsInRange(int value){
var values = Enum.GetValues(typeof(SomeTypes)).Cast<int>().OrderBy(x => x);
return value >= values.First() && value <= values.Last();
}
[EDIT]
In case you want to check if the item is defined instead of just checking if it's inside the range, you can do similarly:
public bool IsDefined(int value){
var values = Enum.GetValues(typeof(SomeTypes)).Cast<int>().OrderBy(x => x);
return values.Contains(value);
}
There is an option for something simpler:
int value;
bool isInRange = string.IsNullOrEmpty(Enum.GetName(typeof(myEnumType), value));
I did a similar thing with objects DataContract
You must decorate the items in the list with [EnumMember] and then you could obtain the enum name with this method. So you would know if value exists in the enum cos returns his enum name.
public static string GetEnumNameFromValue(System.Type typeEnum, string value)
{
FieldInfo[] fis = typeEnum.GetFields();
foreach (FieldInfo fi in fis)
{
EnumMemberAttribute[] attributes = (EnumMemberAttribute[])fi.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(EnumMemberAttribute), false);
if (attributes.Length > 0)
{
if (string.Compare(attributes[0].Value, value, true) == 0)
{
return fi.Name;
}
}
}
return null;
}
I want to check that some integer type belongs to (an) enumeration member.
For Example,
public enum Enum1
{
member1 = 4,
member2 = 5,
member3 = 9,
member4 = 0
}
Enum1 e1 = (Enum1)4 gives me member1
Enum1 e2 = (Enum1)10 gives me nothing and I want to check it.
Use Enum.IsDefined
Enum.IsDefined(typeof(Enum1), 4) == true
but
Enum.IsDefined(typeof(Enum1), 1) == false
As Sam says, you can use IsDefined. This is somewhat awkward though. You may want to look at my Unconstrained Melody library which would let you us:
Enum1 e2 = (Enum1)10;
if (e2.IsNamedValue()) // Will return false
{
}
It's probably not worth it for a single enum call, but if you're doing a lot of stuff with enums you may find some useful things in there.
It should be quicker than Enum.IsDefined btw. It only does a linear scan at the moment, but let me know if you need that to be improved :) (Most enums are small enough that they probably wouldn't benefit from a HashSet, but we could do a binary search...)
int testNum = 5;
bool isMember = Enum.GetValues(typeof(Enum1)).Cast<int>().Any(x => x == testNum);
You look through the values of the enum and compare them to the integer.
static bool EnumTest(int testVal, Enum e)
{
bool result = false;
foreach (var val in Enum.GetValues(typeof(Enum1)))
{
if ((int)val == testVal)
{
result = true;
break;
}
}
return result;
}
Edit: Looks like Sam has a better solution.
You can use Enum.GetValues to get all defined values. Then check if your value exists in that list.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.enum.getvalues.aspx
Be careful this won't work if you have an enum for 3 (Apples and Pears) the methods above won't detect it as valid.
[Flags]
public enum Fruit
{
Apples=1,
Pears=2,
Oranges =4,
}
Here's a succinct little snippet from an extension method I wrote a few years ago. Combines TryParse with IsDefined to do it all in one swoop and handle values that don't exist in the enum.
if (value != null)
{
TEnum result;
if (Enum.TryParse(value.ToString(), true, out result))
{
// since an out-of-range int can be cast to TEnum, double-check that result is valid
if (Enum.IsDefined(typeof(TEnum), result.ToString() ?? string.Empty))
{
return result;
}
}
}
Here's the extension for integer values
public static TEnum ParseToEnum<TEnum>(this int value, TEnum? defaultValue = null, bool useEnumDefault = false) where TEnum : struct
{
return ParseToEnumInternal(value, defaultValue, useEnumDefault);
}
And a usage
public enum Test
{
Value1 = 1,
Value2 = 3
}
var intValue = 1;
var enumParsed = intValue.ParseToEnum<Test>(); // converts to Test.Value1
intValue = 2;
enumParsed = intValue.ParseToEnum<Test>(); // either throws or converts to supplied default
enumParsed = 3.ParseToEnum<Test>(); // converts to Test.Value2
Some people don't like how it dangles off the end of the (potentially nullable) value, but I have an extension that handles null values of nullable types (int?) and I like it myself, so ...
I can post like a Gist of the whole extension method with all the overloads if you're interested.
Use:
if (Enum.IsDefined(typeof(Fruit),e2))
{
//Valid Value
}
else
{
//Invalid ENum Value
}
Found this useful. https://stackoverflow.com/a/64374930/16803533
no need to use IsDefined and No range checking
I'm working on this homework project and having trouble understanding the text explaining how to correctly take the accessed value of the enumeration and then apply the string array value to it. Can you please help me understand this? The text we are using is very difficult and poorly written for a beginner to understand, so I'm kind of on my own here. I've got the first parts written, but need some help on the accessing of the enumeration value and assigning, I think I'm close, but don't understand how to properly get and set the values on this.
Write a class, MyCourses, that contains an enumeration of all the courses that you are currently taking. This enum should be nested inside of your class MyCourses. Your class should also have an array field that provides a short description (as a String) of each of your courses. Write an indexer that takes one of your enumerated courses as an index and returns the String description of the course.
namespace Unit_4_Project
{
public class MyCourses
{
// enumeration that contains an enumeration of all the courses that
// student is currently enrolled in
public enum CourseName
{
IT274_01AU,
CS210_06AU
}
// array field that provides short description for each of classes,
// returns string description of the course
private String[] courseDescription =
{"Intermediate C#: Teaches intermediate elements of C# programming and software design",
"Career Development Strategies: Teaches principles for career progression, resume preparation, and overall self anaylsis"};
// indexer that takes one of the enumerated courses as an index
// and returns the String description of the course
public String this[CourseName index]
{
get
{
if (index == 1)
return courseDescription[0];
else
return courseDescription[1];
}
set
{
if (index == 1)
courseDescription[0] = value;
else
courseDescription[1] = value;
}
}
}
}//end public class MyCourses
You're close, you just went a little nutty there at the end. The CourseName is nothing but a number. You can index directly into your courseDescription array ...
courseDescription[(int)index]
and you have it. :)
What you're missing is that enums convert to ints. (In fact, under they covers, they basically are ints.)
And arrays can be indexed by ints.
Try indexing your array with a parameter of with the type of your enum.
Here is my response from CodeGuru:
Enumerations are strongly typed, so you cannot compare it to an int directly. You can however cast the enumeration to an int. So you would have this instead:
if ( ( ( int ) index ) == 1)
return courseDescription[0];
else
return courseDescription[1];
Enums do not implicitly convert to ints. But you can explicitly convert them.
public String this[CourseName index]
{
get { return courseDescription[(int)index]; }
set { courseDescription[(int)index] = value; }
If you are going to use enums this way, you should define the actual numerical value they represent.
public enum CourseName
{
IT274_01AU = 0,
CS210_06AU = 1
}
While the current implementation of enums will work, there is nothing that says it will do so in the future.
The trick here is that Enumerations are integral datatypes at their core. This means you can cast back and forth between Enum and Int32 if you want to do so:
You need to change the "get" section to:
public String this[CourseName index]
{
get {
return courseDescription[(int)index];
}
}
This works since the enum is basically equivalent to:
public enum CourseName
{
IT274_01AU = 0,
CS210_06AU = 1
}
Does anyone know how to transform a enum value to a human readable value?
For example:
ThisIsValueA should be "This is Value A".
Converting this from a vb code snippet that a certain Ian Horwill left at a blog post long ago... i've since used this in production successfully.
/// <summary>
/// Add spaces to separate the capitalized words in the string,
/// i.e. insert a space before each uppercase letter that is
/// either preceded by a lowercase letter or followed by a
/// lowercase letter (but not for the first char in string).
/// This keeps groups of uppercase letters - e.g. acronyms - together.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="pascalCaseString">A string in PascalCase</param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static string Wordify(string pascalCaseString)
{
Regex r = new Regex("(?<=[a-z])(?<x>[A-Z])|(?<=.)(?<x>[A-Z])(?=[a-z])");
return r.Replace(pascalCaseString, " ${x}");
}
(requires, 'using System.Text.RegularExpressions;')
Thus:
Console.WriteLine(Wordify(ThisIsValueA.ToString()));
Would return,
"This Is Value A".
It's much simpler, and less redundant than providing Description attributes.
Attributes are useful here only if you need to provide a layer of indirection (which the question didn't ask for).
The .ToString on Enums is relatively slow in C#, comparable with GetType().Name (it might even use that under the covers).
If your solution needs to be very quick or highly efficient you may be best of caching your conversions in a static dictionary, and looking them up from there.
A small adaptation of #Leon's code to take advantage of C#3. This does make sense as an extension of enums - you could limit this to the specific type if you didn't want to clutter up all of them.
public static string Wordify(this Enum input)
{
Regex r = new Regex("(?<=[a-z])(?<x>[A-Z])|(?<=.)(?<x>[A-Z])(?=[a-z])");
return r.Replace( input.ToString() , " ${x}");
}
//then your calling syntax is down to:
MyEnum.ThisIsA.Wordify();
Most examples of this that I've seen involve marking your enum values up with [Description] attributes and using reflection to do the "conversion" between the value and the description. Here's an old blog post about it:
<Link>
You can inherit from the "Attribute" class of System.Reflection to create your own "Description" class. Like this (from here):
using System;
using System.Reflection;
namespace FunWithEnum
{
enum Coolness : byte
{
[Description("Not so cool")]
NotSoCool = 5,
Cool, // since description same as ToString no attr are used
[Description("Very cool")]
VeryCool = NotSoCool + 7,
[Description("Super cool")]
SuperCool
}
class Description : Attribute
{
public string Text;
public Description(string text)
{
Text = text;
}
}
class Program
{
static string GetDescription(Enum en)
{
Type type = en.GetType();
MemberInfo[] memInfo = type.GetMember(en.ToString());
if (memInfo != null && memInfo.Length > 0)
{
object[] attrs = memInfo[0].GetCustomAttributes(typeof(Description), false);
if (attrs != null && attrs.Length > 0)
return ((Description)attrs[0]).Text;
}
return en.ToString();
}
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Coolness coolType1 = Coolness.Cool;
Coolness coolType2 = Coolness.NotSoCool;
Console.WriteLine(GetDescription(coolType1));
Console.WriteLine(GetDescription(coolType2));
}
}
}
You can also take a look at this article: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/enumdatabinding.aspx
It's specifically about data binding, but shows how to use an attribute to decorate the enum values and provides a "GetDescription" method to retrieve the text of the attribute. The problem with using the built-in description attribute is that there are other uses/users of that attribute so there is a possibility that the description appears where you don't want it to. The custom attribute solves that issue.
I found it best to define your enum values with an under score so ThisIsValueA would be This_Is_Value_A then you can just do a enumValue.toString().Replace("_"," ") where enumValue is your varible.
An alternative to adding Description attributes to each enumeration is to create an extension method. To re-use Adam's "Coolness" enum:
public enum Coolness
{
NotSoCool,
Cool,
VeryCool,
SuperCool
}
public static class CoolnessExtensions
{
public static string ToString(this Coolness coolness)
{
switch (coolness)
{
case Coolness.NotSoCool:
return "Not so cool";
case Coolness.Cool:
return "Cool";
case Coolness.VeryCool:
return "Very cool";
case Coolness.SuperCool:
return Properties.Settings.Default["SuperCoolDescription"].ToString();
default:
throw new ArgumentException("Unknown amount of coolness", nameof(coolness));
}
}
}
Although this means that the descriptions are further away from the actual values, it allows you to use localisation to print different strings for each language, such as in my VeryCool example.
Enum.GetName(typeof(EnumFoo), EnumFoo.BarValue)