Attaching strings to enums

I Found this little cool way to attach strings to enums. Using .NET 3.5 you can do something cool and simple like this

   public static class EnumExtension
   {
      public static string GetDescription(this Enum enumObj)
      {
         FieldInfo fieldInfo =
         enumObj.GetType().GetField(enumObj.ToString());
         object[] attribArray = fieldInfo.GetCustomAttributes(false);
         if (attribArray.Length == 0)
            return String.Empty;
         else
         {
            DescriptionAttribute attrib =
                attribArray[0] as DescriptionAttribute;
            return attrib.Description;
         }
      }
   }

   class Program
   {
      public enum EmployeeType
      {
         [Description("Regular Employee")]
         RegularEmploye,
         [Description("Store Manager")]
         StoreManager,
         [Description("Chain Store Manager")]
         ChainStoreManager,
         [Description("Department Manager")]
         DepartmentManager,
         [Description("On Floor Supervisor")]
         Supervisor
      }

      static void Main(string[] args)
      {        
         string str = EmployeeType.ChainStoreManager.GetDescription();       
      }
   }

Basically I have added an extension to the enum class to extract the value of the Description Attribute. Now, every Enum class will have a GetDescription method attached to it. This is a nice and clean way to string values out of your enums....

only supported in VS2008 using .NET 3.5

MVP Article coming soon...

I am currently working on an article for the code project showing MVP using AOP and DI (Dependency Injection). I hope to be done before the holidays...

The article will cover the following:

- How to make the view unaware of the controller (using DI)
- How to handle long running processes at the controller level
- How to move logic outside of the controller and place it in the business layer
- How to handle threading within the view, using AOP.

Keep checking, I hope to be done within a few days...