Enumerations and String values in ASP.NET

Question

I'm looking for some best practice advice on enumerations and retrieving an associated string value. Given this:

public enum Fruits {
    Apple,
    Orange,
    Grapefruit,
    Melon
}

What is the best way to get a related string value of the name? Eg. "Grapefruit", given that the string value may not match the representation in the enumeration. eg "Casaba Melon"

My current thinking is function accepting an enum and returning a string, but would that not mean hard coding the string values (which I prefer not to do)? Is using a resources file where the string can be retrieved via the enumeration too heavy handed?

Answer 1

To answer your question, you can decorate your enums with attributes to give them proper display string. Here are some examples

• Using Attributes with Enums
• Enum With String Values In C#

The main limitation of this approach is if you ever need to internationalize your application, I don't know of a way to make attribute strings change value based on thread locale (or whatever way you use to distinguish locales).

Answer 2

R0MANARMY has already given a very nice solution. I'll provide this alternative, less nice, one though still. You can probably make this culture sensitive easier.

Say you have the enum

public enum NicePeople
{
    SomeGuy,
    SomeOtherGuy
}

You can then make an extension method like this

public static class MyExtensions
{
    public static string GetName(this NicePeople tst)
    {
        switch (tst)
        {
            case NicePeople.SomeGuy:
                return "Some Nice guy";
            case NicePeople.SomeOtherGuy:
                return "Another Nice Guy";
            default:
                throw new Exception("Naw");
        }
    }
}

And get your serial killers name like this

NicePeople.SomeGuy.GetName()