Enum value not being recognised correctly

Question

I have some enums which i have set up as follows:

public enum MyDefaultEnums
{
    [EnumMember(Value="My First Enum")]enum1,
    [EnumMember(Value="My Second Enum")]enum2,
}

Then I run a method which checks a given textbox (tb) to see what text is in it. If the value is there in the enum list, it clears it, if it isn't, it leaves it alone:

if (Enum.IsDefined(typeof(MyDefaultEnums), tb.Text) == true)
        {
            tb.Text = "";  
        }

However, its not working. Debugging at runtime shows me that MyDefaultEnums is picking the values up as enum1 and enum2, instead of the strings i put in there. Can anyone point me to where im going wrong? Thanks

Answer 1

You can get all custom attribute values

var enumValues = typeof(MyDefaultEnums)
    .GetFields()
    .SelectMany(f => f.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(EnumMemberAttribute), false))
    .Cast<EnumMemberAttribute>()
    .Select(a => a.Value);

Then just check if your value in that array

if (enumValues.Contains(tb.Text))
    tb.Text = ""; 

---

You can put this code into helper class

public class Enum<TEnum>
{
    public static IEnumerable<string> GetMemberValues()
    {
        return typeof(TEnum).GetFields()
            .SelectMany(f => f.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(EnumMemberAttribute), false))
            .Cast<EnumMemberAttribute>()
            .Select(a => a.Value);
    }
}

Now check is simple as

if (Enum<MyDefaultEnums>.GetMemberValues().Contains(tb.Text))
    tb.Text = "";

And you can use it with any enum marked with EnumMember attributes