Map string column in Entity Framework to Enum

Question

Is there a way to map a string column to an enum in an Entity Model?

I have done this in Hibernate, but can\'t figure it out in EMF.

Answer 1

Probably a nicer version.

OrderStateIdentifier field is used for both JSON serialization and database field, while OrderState is only used in the code for convenience.

    public string OrderStateIdentifier
    {
        get { return OrderState.ToString(); }
        set { OrderState = value.ToEnum(); }
    }

    [NotMapped]
    [JsonIgnore]
    public OrderState OrderState { get; set; }


public static class EnumHelper
{
    /// 

    /// Converts string to enum value (opposite to Enum.ToString()).
    /// 
    /// Type of the enum to convert the string into.
    /// string to convert to enum value.
    public static T ToEnum(this string s) where T: struct
    {
        T newValue;
        return Enum.TryParse(s, out newValue) ? newValue : default(T);
    }
}