Can my enums have friendly names?

Question

I have the following enum

public enum myEnum
{
    ThisNameWorks, 
    This Name doesn't work
    Neither.does.this;
}

Is it not possible to have enums with "friendly names"?

Answer 1

You could use the Description attribute, as Yuriy suggested. The following extension method makes it easy to get the description for a given value of the enum:

public static string GetDescription(this Enum value)
{
    Type type = value.GetType();
    string name = Enum.GetName(type, value);
    if (name != null)
    {
        FieldInfo field = type.GetField(name);
        if (field != null)
        {
            DescriptionAttribute attr = 
                   Attribute.GetCustomAttribute(field, 
                     typeof(DescriptionAttribute)) as DescriptionAttribute;
            if (attr != null)
            {
                return attr.Description;
            }
        }
    }
    return null;
}

You can use it like this:

public enum MyEnum
{
    [Description("Description for Foo")]
    Foo,
    [Description("Description for Bar")]
    Bar
}

MyEnum x = MyEnum.Foo;
string description = x.GetDescription();