C# String Resource Values as Enum String Part values?

Question

Using VS2010 and .net V4.0 I would like to achieve the following:

I already have 2 resource files in my project for 2 languages - English and Czech.

I must say Resource Management in .net is excellent, I am suprised even to get code completion when implementing a String for example:

string desc = Strings.ResourceManagerDesc

This gets the string associated with the current culture of the thread.

Now I am trying to create an Enum that can have the String portion of the Enum interpreted from the Strings resources. In the following way (This code DOES NOT WORK):

public enum DownloadStatus
{
 1 = Strings.DownloadState_Complete,
 2 = Strings.DownloadState_Failed,
 3 = Strings.DownloadState_InProgress
}

This is a made up example, but you can see the point here. Since the above code won't work, is there a best practice way to achieve what I want?

Answer 1

This question is old but does not have an accepted answer and I was looking for a good way to do this.

Here's what I did, I built an extension to my Enum so that it returns a value from the Resource Manager :

public enum EventType
    {
        NewVersion = 1,
        Accepted = 2,
        Rejected = 3,
        BruteForce = 4
    }

    public static class EventTypeExtension
    {
        public static string Display(this EventType type)
        {
            return Strings.ResourceManager.GetString("EventType_" + type);
        }
    }

I hope this can help someone!

Answer 2

Enums cannot inherit from strings. In code you do not need to be concerned with the language of the code, so your enum can simply contain the relevant states.

Looks like what you need is a utility method to convert the enum value to the relevant string representation - simply make a method for this.

EDIT: when you use an enum to switch on cases, but need further information per enumerated value, I tend to drop the enum and create a host of static references and use those in the check instead. This reference can be a class wrapping an enum value, which could then expose helpful titles or descriptions.