Hi,
in this post I will show how to read a description attribute of an enum value by reflection. Let us assume we have a enum linke this
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | public enum MetalBands { [DescriptionAttribute("This is Metallica from CA")] Metallica, [DescriptionAttribute("This is Slayer from CA")] Slayer, [DescriptionAttribute("This is Overkill from NY")] Overkill}; |
Two steps are necessary
Get the Fieldinfo of the the enum value
1 | System.Reflection.FieldInfo oFieldInfo=MetalBands.Metallica.GetType().GetField(MetalBands.Metallica.ToString()); |
and get all attributes of type DescriptionAttribute
1 | DescriptionAttribute[] attributes = (DescriptionAttribute[])oFieldInfo.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DescriptionAttribute), false); |
if an attribute exists print it. We have only one definied , therefore the attribute is at index 0
1 2 3 4 | if (attributes.Length > 0){ System.Console.WriteLine(attributes[0].Description);} |
That’s it.
And as a function 
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 | public static string GetDescription(MetalBands Band){ System.Reflection.FieldInfo oFieldInfo = Band.GetType().GetField(Band.ToString()); DescriptionAttribute[] attributes = (DescriptionAttribute[])oFieldInfo.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DescriptionAttribute), false); if (attributes.Length > 0) { return attributes[0].Description; } else { return Band.ToString(); }}System.Console.WriteLine(GetDescription(MetalBands.Metallica)); |
Have fun
Michael
