How to use generic Tryparse with Enum?

Question

I\'m trying to build generic function that get from user string and try to parse it to Enum valuse like this:

private Enum getEnumStringEnumType(Type i_EnumT         


        

Answer 1

Long ago in Visual Studio 2005 era, I made my own method for TryParse on Enum. I only recently discovered the 2008 implementation and I'm not happy with it's restrictiveness, especially considering that it's a TRY PARSE method; meaning that a programmer is testing an input!

Generally, I prefer to use methods which trust the programmer to know what he's doing :)

My implementation is as follows:

public static bool EnumTryParse(string input, out T theEnum)
{
    foreach (string en in Enum.GetNames(typeof(T)))
    {
        if (en.Equals(input, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase))
        {
            theEnum = (T)Enum.Parse(typeof(T), input, true);
            return true;
        }
    }

    theEnum = default(T);
    return false;
}

The lack of a where T:struct puts the trust in the developer's hands, but it allows you to compile with unknown, generic enums.

As an alternative, you can create a method looping on Enum.GetValues if you want to do an integer comparison when converting to your specified enum.

Hope this helps.