String to enum conversion in C#

Question

I have a combo box where I am displaying some entries like:

Equals Not Equals  Less Than Greater Than 

Notice that these strings contain spaces. I have a enum defined which matches to these entries like:

enum Operation{Equals, Not_Equals, Less_Than, Greater_Than}; 

Since space is not allowed, I have used _ character.

Now, is there any way to convert given string automatically to an enum element without writing a loop or a set of if conditions my self in C#?

Answer 1

I suggest building a Dictionary<string, Operation> to map friendly names to enum constants and use normal naming conventions in the elements themselves.

enum Operation{ Equals, NotEquals, LessThan, GreaterThan };  var dict = new Dictionary<string, Operation> {     { "Equals", Operation.Equals },     { "Not Equals", Operation.NotEquals },     { "Less Than", Operation.LessThan },     { "Greater Than", Operation.GreaterThan } };  var op = dict[str];  

Alternatively, if you want to stick to your current method, you can do (which I recommend against doing):

var op = (Operation)Enum.Parse(typeof(Operation), str.Replace(' ', '_')); 

Answer 2

Operation enumVal = (Operation)Enum.Parse(typeof(Operation), "Equals") 

For "Not Equals", you obv need to replace spaces with underscores in the above statement

EDIT: The following version replaces the spaces with underscores before attempting the parsing:

string someInputText; var operation = (Operation)Enum.Parse(typeof(Operation), someInputText.Replace(" ", "_"));