How to get the Display Name Attribute of an Enum member via MVC razor code?

Question

I've got a property in my model called "Promotion" that its type is a flag enum called "UserPromotion". Members of my enum have display attributes set as follows:

[Flags]
public enum UserPromotion
{
    None = 0x0,

    [Display(Name = "Send Job Offers By Mail")]
    SendJobOffersByMail = 0x1,

    [Display(Name = "Send Job Offers By Sms")]
    SendJobOffersBySms = 0x2,

    [Display(Name = "Send Other Stuff By Sms")]
    SendPromotionalBySms = 0x4,

    [Display(Name = "Send Other Stuff By Mail")]
    SendPromotionalByMail = 0x8
}

Now I want to be able to create say a ul in my view to show the selected values of my "Promotion" property. This is what I have done so far but the problem is that how can I get the display names here?

<ul>
    @foreach (int aPromotion in @Enum.GetValues(typeof(UserPromotion)))
    {
        var currentPromotion = (int)Model.JobSeeker.Promotion;
        if ((currentPromotion & aPromotion) == aPromotion)
        {
        <li>Here I don't know how to get the display attribute of "currentPromotion".</li>
        }
    }
</ul>

Answer 1

UPDATE

First solution was focused on getting display names from enum. Code below should be exact solution for your problem.

You can use this helper class for enums:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;
using System.Linq;
using System.Reflection;

public static class EnumHelper<T>
    where T : struct, Enum // This constraint requires C# 7.3 or later.
{
    public static IList<T> GetValues(Enum value)
    {
        var enumValues = new List<T>();

        foreach (FieldInfo fi in value.GetType().GetFields(BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.Public))
        {
            enumValues.Add((T)Enum.Parse(value.GetType(), fi.Name, false));
        }
        return enumValues;
    }

    public static T Parse(string value)
    {
        return (T)Enum.Parse(typeof(T), value, true);
    }

    public static IList<string> GetNames(Enum value)
    {
        return value.GetType().GetFields(BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.Public).Select(fi => fi.Name).ToList();
    }

    public static IList<string> GetDisplayValues(Enum value)
    {
        return GetNames(value).Select(obj => GetDisplayValue(Parse(obj))).ToList();
    }

    private static string lookupResource(Type resourceManagerProvider, string resourceKey)
    {
        foreach (PropertyInfo staticProperty in resourceManagerProvider.GetProperties(BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Public))
        {
            if (staticProperty.PropertyType == typeof(System.Resources.ResourceManager))
            {
                System.Resources.ResourceManager resourceManager = (System.Resources.ResourceManager)staticProperty.GetValue(null, null);
                return resourceManager.GetString(resourceKey);
            }
        }

        return resourceKey; // Fallback with the key name
    }

    public static string GetDisplayValue(T value)
    {
        var fieldInfo = value.GetType().GetField(value.ToString());

        var descriptionAttributes = fieldInfo.GetCustomAttributes(
            typeof(DisplayAttribute), false) as DisplayAttribute[];

        if (descriptionAttributes[0].ResourceType != null)
            return lookupResource(descriptionAttributes[0].ResourceType, descriptionAttributes[0].Name);

        if (descriptionAttributes == null) return string.Empty;
        return (descriptionAttributes.Length > 0) ? descriptionAttributes[0].Name : value.ToString();
    }
}

And then you can use it in your view as following:

<ul>
    @foreach (var value in @EnumHelper<UserPromotion>.GetValues(UserPromotion.None))
    {
         if (value == Model.JobSeeker.Promotion)
        {
            var description = EnumHelper<UserPromotion>.GetDisplayValue(value);
            <li>@Html.DisplayFor(e => description )</li>
        }
    }
</ul>

Hope it helps! :)