KeyLimeTie Blog

Enumerate An Enumeration
By Brian Pautsch – 4/6/2006 9:53:01 PM. Posted to Code Snippets.

Enumerations can be a great way to store a number of named constants. Have you ever had the need to display all of the string values of an enumeration? This code snippet show you how to load a dropdownlist of car makes:

1private void LoadCarMakes()
2{
3 foreach (CarMakes carmake in GetEnumValues(typeof(CarMakes)))
4 {
5   ddlCarMakes.Items.Add(carmake);
6 }
7}
8private static System.Enum[] GetEnumValues(Type enumType)
9{
10 if (enumType.BaseType == typeof(System.Enum))
11 {
12  System.Reflection.FieldInfo[] fi = enumType.GetFields(
            BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.Public);
13  System.Enum[] values = new System.Enum[fi.Length];
14  for (int iEnum = 0; iEnum < fi.Length; iEnum++)
15  {
16   values[iEnum] = (System.Enum)fi[iEnum].GetValue(null);
17  }
18  return values;
19 }
20 else
21 {
22  throw new ArgumentException("enumType parameter is not a System.Enum");
23 }
24}