Binding an enum to a WinForms combo box, and then setting it

Question

a lot of people have answered the question of how to bind an enum to a combo box in WinForms. Its like this:

comboBox1.DataSource = Enum.GetValues(typeof(MyE         


        

Answer 1

This is probably never going to be seen among all the other responses, but this is the code I came up with, this has the benefit of using the DescriptionAttribute if it exists, but otherwise using the name of the enum value itself.

I used a dictionary because it has a ready made key/value item pattern. A List> would also work and without the unnecessary hashing, but a dictionary makes for cleaner code.

I get members that have a MemberType of Field and that are literal. This creates a sequence of only members that are enum values. This is robust since an enum cannot have other fields.

public static class ControlExtensions
{
    public static void BindToEnum(this ComboBox comboBox)
    {
        var enumType = typeof(TEnum);

        var fields = enumType.GetMembers()
                              .OfType()
                              .Where(p => p.MemberType == MemberTypes.Field)
                              .Where(p => p.IsLiteral)
                              .ToList();

        var valuesByName = new Dictionary();

        foreach (var field in fields)
        {
            var descriptionAttribute = field.GetCustomAttribute(typeof(DescriptionAttribute), false) as DescriptionAttribute;

            var value = (int)field.GetValue(null);
            var description = string.Empty;

            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(descriptionAttribute?.Description))
            {
                description = descriptionAttribute.Description;
            }
            else
            {
                description = field.Name;
            }

            valuesByName[description] = value;
        }

        comboBox.DataSource = valuesByName.ToList();
        comboBox.DisplayMember = "Key";
        comboBox.ValueMember = "Value";
    }


}