How to return enum description instead of name in API via Dto file in C#?

Question

I have an enum called FeeNameEnum where the FeeNameEnum values consists of Description as well.
I am trying to return the description of a FeeName in my API. Here is the enum:

public enum FeeNameEnum
{
        [Description("Account Opening Fee (project proponent, General Account holder, Retail Aggregation Account and End User Accoun")]
        AccountOpeningFee,
}

Currently, I am getting AccountOpeningFee which is the enum name in the api response. Is there any way I can get the Description instead of the enum name?

Here is my Dto file code:

public class FeeScheduleDto
{
        public Guid Id { get; set; }
        public FeeNameEnum FeeName { get; set; }
        public string FeeNameName { get { return FeeName.ToString(); } }
}

Any help would be more than appreciable.

Answer 1

You can use DescriptionAttribute, from System.ComponentModel, to query attributes of an enum value.
In the code below GetEnumDescription demonstrates the usage of DescriptionAttribute. It can be used to get the description of any enum value. It also falls back to the enum value itself in case a description is not available.

Code example:

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Linq;

public class Program
{
    public static string GetEnumDescription(Enum value)
    {
        if (value == null) { return ""; }

        DescriptionAttribute attribute = value.GetType()
                .GetField(value.ToString())
                ?.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DescriptionAttribute), false)
                .SingleOrDefault() as DescriptionAttribute;
        return attribute == null ? value.ToString() : attribute.Description;
    }

    public enum FeeNameEnum
    {
        [Description("Account Opening Fee description (...)")]
        AccountOpeningFee,
    }

    public static void Main(String[] args)
    {
        FeeNameEnum e = FeeNameEnum.AccountOpeningFee;
        Console.WriteLine(GetEnumDescription(e));
    }
}

Output:

Account Opening Fee description (...)

Usage in your code:

In your actual code you can add GetEnumDescription (and using System.ComponentModel;), then change the FeeNameName property from:

public string FeeNameName { get { return FeeName.ToString(); } }

To:

public string FeeNameName { get { return GetEnumDescription(FeeName); } }

In case you encounter errors, you can use this version of GetEnumDescription which is doing it step by step and so might help to identify where the problem comes from:

public static string GetEnumDescription1(Enum value)
{
    if (value == null) { return ""; }

    var type = value.GetType();
    var field = type.GetField(value.ToString());
    var custAttr = field?.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DescriptionAttribute), false);
    DescriptionAttribute attribute = custAttr?.SingleOrDefault() as DescriptionAttribute;
    return attribute == null ? value.ToString() : attribute.Description;
}

Note: the argument passed to the value parameter above is expected to be either a simple valid enum value, or a flag composite - "or" (|) of several values.