How to Convert Enum to String in C#

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  4. How to Convert Enum to String in C#
Muhammad Maisam Abbas Feb 02, 2024
Csharp Csharp Enum Csharp String
  1. Convert Enum to String With the Description Attribute in C#
  2. Convert Enum to String With the switch Statement in C#
How to Convert Enum to String in C#

This tutorial will discuss the methods to convert an enum to a string in C#.

Convert Enum to String With the Description Attribute in C#

We do not have to use anything to convert it to a string for a simple Enum value that follows the naming conventions. It can be displayed to the user with the Console.WriteLine() function in C#. It is demonstrated in the coding example below.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace enum_to_string {
  public enum Status { InProgress, Completed }
  class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
      Status complete = Status.Completed;
      Console.WriteLine(complete);
    }
  }
}

Output:

Completed

In the above code, we directly printed the Enum value Completed in string format in C#. This was possible because our Enum value followed the variable naming conventions in C#. But if we want to display a reader-friendly string, we have to use the Description attribute of Enums in C#. The Description attribute is used to describe each value of an Enum. We can convert our Enum to a reader-friendly string by writing the string inside the Description attribute of the Enum. The following code example shows us how to convert an Enum value to a string with the Description attribute in C#.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Reflection;

namespace enum_to_string {
  public enum Status {
    [Description("The Desired Task is InProgress")] InProgress,
    [Description("The Desired Task is Successfully Completed")] Completed
  }
  static class extensionClass {
    public static string getDescription(this Enum e) {
      Type eType = e.GetType();
      string eName = Enum.GetName(eType, e);
      if (eName != null) {
        FieldInfo fieldInfo = eType.GetField(eName);
        if (fieldInfo != null) {
          DescriptionAttribute descriptionAttribute = Attribute.GetCustomAttribute(
              fieldInfo, typeof(DescriptionAttribute)) as DescriptionAttribute;
          if (descriptionAttribute != null) {
            return descriptionAttribute.Description;
          }
        }
      }
      return null;
    }
  }
  class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
      Status complete = Status.Completed;
      string description = complete.getDescription();
      Console.WriteLine(description);
    }
  }
}

Output:

The Desired Task is Successfully Completed

In the above code, we created an extension method, getDescription, that returns the Enum value description in C#. This method works perfectly fine, but it is a little complex. This complexity is simplified in the next section.

Convert Enum to String With the switch Statement in C#

A lot of complexity of the previous method can be simplified by using the switch statement in C#. We can assign the desired value to our string variable for each Enum value with the switch statement in C#. See the following code example.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Reflection;

namespace enum_to_string {
  public enum Status { InProgress, Completed }
  static class extensionClass {
    public static string getValue(this Status e) {
      switch (e) {
        case Status.InProgress:
          return "The Desired Task is InProgress";
        case Status.Completed:
          return "The Desired Task is Successfully Completed";
      }
      return String.Empty;
    }
  }
  class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
      Status complete = Status.Completed;
      string value = complete.getValue();
      Console.WriteLine(value);
    }
  }
}

Output:

The Desired Task is Successfully Completed

In the above code, we created an extension method, getValue(), that returns a string based on the Enum value using the switch statement in C#. The getValue() function uses the switch statement and returns a different string for each value of our specified Enum.

Author: Muhammad Maisam Abbas
Muhammad Maisam Abbas avatar Muhammad Maisam Abbas avatar

Maisam is a highly skilled and motivated Data Scientist. He has over 4 years of experience with Python programming language. He loves solving complex problems and sharing his results on the internet.

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