Enumerations and String values in ASP.NET

I'm looking for some best practice advice on enumerations and retrieving an associated string value. Given this:

public enum Fruits {
    Apple,
    Orange,
    Grapefruit,
    Melon
}

What is the best way to get a related string value of the name? Eg. "Grapefruit", given that the string value may not match the representation in the enumeration. eg "Casaba Melon"

My curr开发者_Python百科ent thinking is function accepting an enum and returning a string, but would that not mean hard coding the string values (which I prefer not to do)? Is using a resources file where the string can be retrieved via the enumeration too heavy handed?

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To answer your question, you can decorate your enums with attributes to give them proper display string. Here are some examples

• Using Attributes with Enums
• Enum With String Values In C#

The main limitation of this approach is if you ever need to internationalize your application, I don't know of a way to make attribute strings change value based on thread locale (or whatever way you use to distinguish locales).

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R0MANARMY has already given a very nice solution. I'll provide this alternative, less nice, one though still. You can probably make this culture sensitive easier.

Say you have the enum

public enum NicePeople
{
    SomeGuy,
    SomeOtherGuy
}

You can then make an extension method like this

public static class MyExtensions
{
    public static string GetName(this NicePeople tst)
    {
        switch (tst)
        {
            case NicePeople.SomeGuy:
                return "Some Nice guy";
            case NicePeople.SomeOtherGuy:
                return "Another Nice Guy";
            default:
                throw new Exception("Naw");
        }
    }
}

And get your serial killers name like this

NicePeople.SomeGuy.GetName()