EpicEnums 1.2023.7.291844

Epic Enums

Think the standard C# enums are boring? Yeah, same! Lets improve that.

What does it solve/improve on?

Common c# enums are a powerfull tool for constant data. They are fast and simple. However they sometimes lack the flexibility that you want in a complex application.

Here is a standard C# enum like we all know:

public enum FruitsEnum
{
    Apple,
    Banana,
    Orange,
    DragonFruit
} 

All pretty standard nothing special, however if we want to tie some extra properties to our fruit then things get a little tricky. We could of course add an attribute and make it work:

public enum FruitsEnum
{
    [Display(Name = "Apple")]
    Apple,
    [Display(Name = "Banana")]
    Banana,
    [Display(Name = "Orange")]
    Orange,
    [Display(Name = "Dragon Fruit")]
    DragonFruit
} 

First of all, this is not very readable and can get messy quickly. Most importantly: To access these values you have to write code using reflection to access these properties: (as per stackoverflow)

public static class Extensions
{
    /// <summary>
    ///     A generic extension method that aids in reflecting 
    ///     and retrieving any attribute that is applied to an `Enum`.
    /// </summary>
    public static TAttribute GetAttribute<TAttribute>(this Enum enumValue) 
            where TAttribute : Attribute
    {
        return enumValue.GetType()
                        .GetMember(enumValue.ToString())
                        .First()
                        .GetCustomAttribute<TAttribute>();
    }
}

public class Foo 
{
    public FruitsEnum Fruit = FruitsEnum.Apple;

    public void DisplayName()
    {
        var fruitDisplayName = Fruit.GetAttribute<DisplayAttribute>();
        Console.WriteLine("Which friot is it?");
        Console.WriteLine (fruitDisplayName.Name);
    } 
}

Reflection can be slow and give issues in AOT compiling. Plus it can be kind of tedious.

A Better enum

(The name epic enums was chosen because it alliterats ever so lovely)

Installing the package

The epic enums package can be found on nuget.

dotnet add package EpicEnums

Creating your first Epic Enum

Epic Enums works based on source generation, but needs some work from you as a developer.

Warning: Epic enums has some guidelines on how to work with them. If you dont follow these guidelines unexpected behaviour might happen.

The value record

using EpicEnums;

namespace SampleApp.NotVegetables;

public partial record Fruit : IEpicEnumValue  // It is very important that this is a partial record
{
    public required string Name { get; init; }
    public required string Description { get; init; }
    public required bool LikeAble { get; init; }
}

The enum record

using EpicEnums;

namespace SampleApp.NotVegetables;

public partial record Fruits : EpicEnum<Fruit>
{
    public static Fruit Apple { get; } = new() { Name = "Apple", Description = "A red fruit", LikeAble = true };
    public static Fruit Banana { get; } = new() { Name = "Banana", Description = "A yellow fruit", LikeAble = true };
    public static Fruit Orange { get; } = new() { Name = "Orange", Description = "An orange fruit", LikeAble = false };
    public static Fruit DragonFruit { get; } = new() { Name = "Dragon Fruit", Description = "A pink fruit", LikeAble = true };
}