Working With SmartEnums In C#

Now we have a constructor with minimum name and value variables and the rest we can have based on our requirement. In our case, we need both average price and seat capacity information for each vehicle type.

We declared static read-only variables with self-object creation by passing the respective values in the constructor.

Now on our business logic, we can call as follows,

Vehicles vehicle = Vehicles.CAR;
Console.WriteLine($"Price for Car {vehicle.Price}");
Console.WriteLine($"Price for Bike {Vehicles.BIKE.Price}");
Console.WriteLine($"Price for Van {Vehicles.FromName("VAN").Price}");
Console.WriteLine($"Seat Capacity for Car {vehicle.SeatCapacity}");
Console.WriteLine($"Seat Capacity for Bike {Vehicles.BIKE.SeatCapacity}");
Console.WriteLine($"Seat Capacity for Van {Vehicles.FromName("VAN").SeatCapacity}");

As observed, each console statement has different calling styles. One with vehicle variable and next directly calling from Enum type and last we used a special method called FromName.

SmartEnum class will accept name and value parameters via its constructor and it exposes two public methods FromName and FromValue. Based on the given Name or Value, it will return the vehicle object and from there we can call our properties.

Now, we have no need for any extra methods on our business logic based on the enum type. If you have any requirement to implement huge functionality for each enum type. We can have the above vehicle class as an abstract class and inherit the required enum types as follows for more readability and future extendable classes.

using Ardalis.SmartEnum;
public abstract class Vehicles: SmartEnum < Vehicles > {
    public static readonly Vehicles CAR = new CARVehicle();
    public static readonly Vehicles BIKE = new BIKEVehicle();
    public static readonly Vehicles VAN = new VANVehicle();
    public decimal Price {
        get;
        private set;
    }
    public int SeatCapacity {
        get;
        private set;
    }
    public Vehicles(string name, int value, decimal price, int seatCapacity): base(name, value) {
        Price = price;
        SeatCapacity = seatCapacity;
    }
}
public sealed class CARVehicle: Vehicles {
    //Additional functionality can be implemented here
    public CARVehicle(): base("CAR", 1, 10000, 5) {}
}
public sealed class BIKEVehicle: Vehicles {
    //Additional functionality can be implemented here
    public BIKEVehicle(): base("BIKE", 2, 20000, 2) {}
}
public sealed class VANVehicle: Vehicles {
    //Additional functionality can be implemented here
    public VANVehicle(): base("VAN", 3, 30000, 12) {}
}

On business logic,

Vehicles vehicle = Vehicles.CAR;
Console.WriteLine($"Price for Car {vehicle.Price}");
Console.WriteLine($"Price for Bike {Vehicles.BIKE.Price}");
Console.WriteLine($"Price for Van {Vehicles.FromName("VAN").Price}");
Console.WriteLine($"Seat Capacity for Car {vehicle.SeatCapacity}");
Console.WriteLine($"Seat Capacity for Bike {Vehicles.BIKE.SeatCapacity}");
Console.WriteLine($"Seat Capacity for Van {Vehicles.FromName("VAN").SeatCapacity}");

Output as follows,

Thank you for the SmartEnum, now our code will be neater and more readable.

Happy Coding 🙂