Enum to dictionary

Question

I want to implement an extension method which converts an enum to a dictionary:

public static Dictionary ToDictionary(this Enum @enum)
{
           


        

Answer 1

You can't use type1 as a generic parameter, because it is a variable, not a type.

The following code does something similar to what your code shows:

public static Dictionary ToDictionary()
    where TEnum : struct
{
    if (!typeof(TEnum).IsEnum)
        throw new ArgumentException("Type must be an enumeration");
    return Enum.GetValues(typeof(TEnum)).Cast().
            ToDictionary(e => Enum.GetName(typeof(TEnum), e));
}

Use it like this:

ToDictionary()

But I am not really sure, this is, what you expected?

Additionally, it has one problem: You can pass any struct, not just enums and this will result in a runtime exception. See Jon's answer for more details about that.