Using attributes to cut down on enum to enum mapping and enum/const to action switch statments

Question

I imagine everyone has seen code like:

public void Server2ClientEnumConvert( ServerEnum server)
{
    switch(server)
    {
       case ServerEnum.One:
           return ClientEnum.ABC
       //And so on.

Instead of this badness we could do somthing like:

public enum ServerEnum
{
     [Enum2Enum(ClientEnum.ABC)]
     One,
}

Now we can use reflection to rip through ServerEnum and get the conversion mappings from the enum declaration itself.

The problem I am having here is in the declaration of the Enum2Enum attribute.

This works but replacing object o with Enum e does not. I do not want to be able to pass in objects to the constructor, only other enums.

public class EnumToEnumAttribute : Attribute
{
    public EnumToEnumAttribute(object o){}
}

This fails to compile.

public class EnumToEnumAttribute : Attribute
{
    public EnumToEnumAttribute(Enum e){}
}

Is there a reason for the compile error? How else could I pass in the information needed to map besides:

EnumtoEnumAttribute(Type dest, string enumString)

This seems too verbose but if it is the only way then I guess I will use it.

Answer 1

Using almost the same example, you can achieve this directly in the enum:

public enum ServerEnum
{
   One = ClientEnum.ABC,
}

This has the benefit of not requiring Reflection, is easier to read (in my opinion), and overall requires less overhead.