Convert string to Enum in Python

Question

This functionality is already built in to Enum [1]:

>>> from enum import Enum
>>> class Build(Enum):
...   debug = 200
...   build = 400
... 
>>> Build['debug']
<Build.debug: 200>

The member names are case sensitive, so if user-input is being converted you need to make sure case matches:

an_enum = input('Which type of build?')
build_type = Build[an_enum.lower()]

[1] Official docs: Enum programmatic access

Another alternative (especially useful if your strings don't map 1-1 to your enum cases) is to add a staticmethod to your Enum, e.g.:

class QuestionType(enum.Enum):
    MULTI_SELECT = "multi"
    SINGLE_SELECT = "single"

    @staticmethod
    def from_str(label):
        if label in ('single', 'singleSelect'):
            return QuestionType.SINGLE_SELECT
        elif label in ('multi', 'multiSelect'):
            return QuestionType.MULTI_SELECT
        else:
            raise NotImplementedError

Then you can do question_type = QuestionType.from_str('singleSelect')

def custom_enum(typename, items_dict):
    class_definition = """
from enum import Enum

class {}(Enum):
    {}""".format(typename, '\n    '.join(['{} = {}'.format(k, v) for k, v in items_dict.items()]))

    namespace = dict(__name__='enum_%s' % typename)
    exec(class_definition, namespace)
    result = namespace[typename]
    result._source = class_definition
    return result

MyEnum = custom_enum('MyEnum', {'a': 123, 'b': 321})
print(MyEnum.a, MyEnum.b)

Or do you need to convert string to known Enum?

class MyEnum(Enum):
    a = 'aaa'
    b = 123

print(MyEnum('aaa'), MyEnum(123))

Or:

class BuildType(Enum):
    debug = 200
    release = 400

print(BuildType.__dict__['debug'])

print(eval('BuildType.debug'))
print(type(eval('BuildType.debug')))    
print(eval(BuildType.__name__ + '.debug'))  # for work with code refactoring

My Java-like solution to the problem. Hope it helps someone...

from enum import Enum, auto


class SignInMethod(Enum):
    EMAIL = auto(),
    GOOGLE = auto()

    @classmethod
    def value_of(cls, value):
        for k, v in cls.__members__.items():
            if k == value:
                return v
        else:
            raise ValueError(f"'{cls.__name__}' enum not found for '{value}'")


sim = SignInMethod.value_of('EMAIL')
assert sim == SignInMethod.EMAIL
assert sim.name == 'EMAIL'
assert isinstance(sim, SignInMethod)
# SignInMethod.value_of("invalid sign-in method")  # should raise `ValueError`

An improvement to the answer of @rogueleaderr :

class QuestionType(enum.Enum):
    MULTI_SELECT = "multi"
    SINGLE_SELECT = "single"

    @classmethod
    def from_str(cls, label):
        if label in ('single', 'singleSelect'):
            return cls.SINGLE_SELECT
        elif label in ('multi', 'multiSelect'):
            return cls.MULTI_SELECT
        else:
            raise NotImplementedError