Enum “Inheritance”

Question

I have an enum in a low level namespace. I\'d like to provide a class or enum in a mid level namespace that \"inherits\" the low level enum.

namespace low
{
         


        

Answer 1

I realize I'm a bit late to this party, but here's my two cents.

We're all clear that Enum inheritance is not supported by the framework. Some very interesting workarounds have been suggested in this thread, but none of them felt quite like what I was looking for, so I had a go at it myself.

Introducing: ObjectEnum

You can check the code and documentation here: https://github.com/dimi3tron/ObjectEnum.

And the package here: https://www.nuget.org/packages/ObjectEnum

Or just install it: Install-Package ObjectEnum

In short, ObjectEnum acts as a wrapper for any enum. By overriding the GetDefinedValues() in subclasses, one can specify which enum values are valid for this specific class.

A number of operator overloads have been added to make an ObjectEnum instance behave as if it were an instance of the underlying enum, keeping in mind the defined value restrictions. This means you can easily compare the instance to an int or enum value, and thus use it in a switch case or any other conditional.

I'd like to refer to the github repo mentioned above for examples and further info.

I hope you find this useful. Feel free to comment or open an issue on github for further thoughts or comments.

Here are a few short examples of what you can do with ObjectEnum:

var sunday = new WorkDay(DayOfWeek.Sunday); //throws exception
var monday = new WorkDay(DayOfWeek.Monday); //works fine
var label = $"{monday} is day {(int)monday}." //produces: "Monday is day 1."
var mondayIsAlwaysMonday = monday == DayOfWeek.Monday; //true, sorry...

var friday = new WorkDay(DayOfWeek.Friday);

switch((DayOfWeek)friday){
    case DayOfWeek.Monday:
        //do something monday related
        break;
        /*...*/
    case DayOfWeek.Friday:
        //do something friday related
        break;
}