How to add extension methods to Enums

Question

I have this Enum code:

enum Duration { Day, Week, Month };

Can I add a extension methods for this Enum?

Answer 1

You can create an extension for anything, even object(although that's not considered best-practice). Understand an extension method just as a public static method. You can use whatever parameter-type you like on methods.

public static class DurationExtensions
{
  public static int CalculateDistanceBetween(this Duration first, Duration last)
  {
    //Do something here
  }
}

Answer 2

Of course you can, say for example, you want to use the DescriptionAttribue on your enum values:

using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;

public enum Duration 
{ 
    [Description("Eight hours")]
    Day,

    [Description("Five days")]
    Week,

    [Description("Twenty-one days")] 
    Month 
}

Now you want to be able to do something like:

Duration duration = Duration.Week;
var description = duration.GetDescription(); // will return "Five days"

Your extension method GetDescription() can be written as follows:

using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Reflection;

public static string GetDescription(this Enum value)
{
    FieldInfo fieldInfo = value.GetType().GetField(value.ToString());
    if (fieldInfo == null) return null;
    var attribute = (DescriptionAttribute)fieldInfo.GetCustomAttribute(typeof(DescriptionAttribute));
    return attribute.Description;
}