Very basic use of Enum.TryParse doesn't work

Question

I found a very basic code as described below and I cannot get it to work in my c# windows Forms solution. I got the errors:

• The best overloaded method match for 'System.Enum.TryParse(string, out string)' has some invalid arguments

• Argument 1: cannot convert from 'System.Type' to 'string'

  public enum PetType
  {
      None,
      Cat = 1,
      Dog = 2
  }
  
  string value = "Dog";
  PetType pet = (PetType)Enum.TryParse(typeof(PetType), value);
  
  if (pet == PetType.Dog)
  {
      ...
  }
  

I don't understand where is the problem. The errors are all on the Enum.TryParse line. Any idea?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I think you ment to use Enum.Parse:

 PetType pet = (PetType)Enum.Parse(typeof(PetType), value);

TryParse only returns true if parsing succeeded, false otherwise.

Answer 2

The first thing to note is that TryParse returns a bool not the Type of your enum.

The out parameter must point to a variable that is the Type of the enum.

Answer 3

As you can see from the documentation, Enum.TryParse<TEnum> is a generic method that returns a boolean property. You are using it incorrectly. It uses an out parameter to store the result:

string value = "Dog";
PetType pet;
if (Enum.TryParse<PetType>(value, out pet))
{
    if (pet == PetType.Dog)
    {
        ...
    }
}
else
{
    // Show an error message to the user telling him that the value string
    // couldn't be parsed back to the PetType enum
}