Grabbing the right name from an Enum in C# using a value

Question

I have the following enumerator.

public enum Fruits
    {
        Banana = 1,
        Apple = 2,
        Blueberry = 3,
        Orange = 4
    }

And what I'd like to do is something like the following

static void FruitType(int Type)
    {
        string MyType = Enum.GetName(Fruits, Type);
    }

Basically I want the string MyType to populate with the name corresponding to the integer I input. So if I enter 1, MyType should have a value of Banana.

Eg. FruitType(1) --> MyType = Banana

On of the reasons this is not normally done is that the strings obtained this way are hard to localize. Just an fyi. I'll have an answer in a minute after I dig up some old code that demonstrates this. — Joel Coehoorn
– Joel Coehoorn, Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 14:51
Also, a better FruitType function design would return a string — Joel Coehoorn
– Joel Coehoorn, Commented Jul 29, 2013 at 14:51

keyboardP · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-29 15:03:10Z

7

The first parameter of GetName requires the type.

static void FruitType(int Type)
{
   string MyType = Enum.GetName(typeof(Fruits), Type);
}

If you're not planning on doing anything else in the method, you can return the string like this

static string FruitType(int Type)
{
   return Enum.GetName(typeof(Fruits), Type);
}

string fruit = FruitType(100);
if(!String.IsNullOrEmpty(fruit))
   Console.WriteLine(fruit); 
else
   Console.WriteLine("Fruit doesn't exist");

edited Jul 29, 2013 at 15:03

answered Jul 29, 2013 at 14:48

keyboardP

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7 Comments

Sriram Sakthivel Over a year ago

Convert.ToString doesn't ensure null.

Sriram Sakthivel Over a year ago

If you want to avoid null you could do Enum.GetName(typeof(Fruits), Type) ?? string.Empty

keyboardP Over a year ago

@SriramSakthivel - Sorry, I'm not following. I said it ensures that a NullReferenceException isn't thrown, not that it ensures null. Enum.GetName returns null if the enum value can't be found. If you call ToString on that, it will throw an exception. By using Convert.ToString instead, it will return null.

Sriram Sakthivel Over a year ago

Without Convert.ToString will a NullReferenceException be thrown?

keyboardP Over a year ago

@user2094139 - Yup. It was fine before, it just had an extra call that wasn't necessary (forgot a string was being returned anyway from the GetName call).

|

Habib · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-29 14:49:32Z

2

Basically I want the string MyType to populate with the name corresponding to the integer I input.

string str = ((Fruits)1).ToString();

You can modify your method like:

static string FruitType(int Type)
{
    if (Enum.IsDefined(typeof(Fruits), Type))
    {

        return ((Fruits)Type).ToString();
    }
    else
    {
        return "Not defined"; 
    }
}

The use it like

string str = FruitType(2);

answered Jul 29, 2013 at 14:49

Habib

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