How to print an Enum Value based on an integer user input?

Question

I've a got an Enum that looks like so:

 public enum Month 
    {
        January, February, March,
        April, May, June, July, August,
        Septemper, October, November, December
    };

What I need to really do is ask and read from the user a number also like so:

Console.WriteLine("Enter the number of the 
month")
int monthValue=int.parse(Console.ReadLine())

Lastly I wanna take the monthValue and print the equivalent Enum. (e.g april for monthvalue 4)

Possible duplicate of [Cast int to enum in C#](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29482/cast-int-to-enum-in-c-sharp) — Tân, Nov 21 '18 at 14:19
It's quite useful for this type of enum to tell it to start from 1 - then you don't have to worry about forgetting to subtract the value to get the right result - `public enum Month { January = 1, February, [etc],` — stuartd, Nov 21 '18 at 14:36

NILF · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-21T14:28:48.660

You can simply cast the value to the enum. Don't forget to set initial value for January or take into account that by default enum starts from 0;

Console application will be next:

class Program
{

    public enum Month
    {
        January, February, March,
        April, May, June, July, August,
        Septemper, October, November, December
    };

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Enter the number of the month");

        int monthValue = 0;
        int.TryParse(Console.ReadLine(), out monthValue);
        Console.WriteLine((Month)monthValue - 1);
        Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

in case you don't need temporary variable you could also really convert it to enum. But not forget to set default enum value

    public enum Month
    {
        January = 1, February, March,
        April, May, June, July, August,
        Septemper, October, November, December
    };

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Enter the number of the month");
        var input = Enum.Parse(typeof(Month), Console.ReadLine());
        Console.WriteLine(input);
        Console.ReadKey();
    }

Instead of casting the integer to an enum, you can use `Enum.Parse` https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.enum.parse?view=netframework-4.7.2 — Isitar, Nov 21 '18 at 14:24

Stefan Illner · Answer 2 · 2018-11-21T14:37:30.857

1

The following code prints the name of the month to the console. It uses the static Enum.GetName()-method for that.

string monthName = Enum.GetName(typeof(Month), monthValue - 1);
Console.WriteLine(monthName);

edited Nov 21 '18 at 14:37

answered Nov 21 '18 at 14:30

Stefan Illner

179
1
5
13

How to print an Enum Value based on an integer user input?

2 Answers2