C# enum contains value

c# enums contains
Fred Smith picture Fred Smith · Nov 6, 2012 · Viewed 68.2k times · Source

I have an enum

enum myEnum2 { ab, st, top, under, below}

I would like to write a function to test if a given value is included in myEnum

something like that:

private bool EnumContainValue(Enum myEnum, string myValue)
{
     return Enum.GetValues(typeof(myEnum))
                .ToString().ToUpper().Contains(myValue.ToUpper()); 
}

But it doesn't work because myEnum parameter is not recognized.

Answer

Sergey Berezovskiy picture Sergey Berezovskiy · Nov 6, 2012

Why not use

Enum.IsDefined(typeof(myEnum), value);

BTW it's nice to create generic Enum<T> class, which wraps around calls to Enum (actually I wonder why something like this was not added to Framework 2.0 or later):

public static class Enum<T>
{
    public static bool IsDefined(string name)
    {
        return Enum.IsDefined(typeof(T), name);
    }

    public static bool IsDefined(T value)
    {
        return Enum.IsDefined(typeof(T), value);
    }

    public static IEnumerable<T> GetValues()
    {
        return Enum.GetValues(typeof(T)).Cast<T>();
    }
    // etc
}

This allows to avoid all this typeof stuff and use strongly-typed values:

Enum<StringSplitOptions>.IsDefined("None")

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