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c#reflectionenums
James Hay
James Hay

Reputation: 7325

Same value, unknown type equality in reflection

I'm using reflection to retrieve the value of a property from an object. The value is an enum:

enum MyEnum 
{
    None,
    SomeValue
}

Which is on an object, and the property also has an attribute

class MyObject
{
    [MyAttribute(ExclusionValue = MyEnum.None)]
    public MyEnum EnumProperty { get; set; }
}

So when I get to the reflection part of things I would like to check if the value is equal to the ExclusionValue

// exclusionValue is the value taken from the attribute
// propertyValue is the value retrieved by reflection of the containing object, so at 
// this time it just an `object` type.

if(exclusionValue == propertyValue)
{
    // Both values are `MyEnum.None` but the if statement never evaluates true.
}

I've tried to cast the exclusionValue to an object so that they are both the same visible type

if((object)exclusionValue == propertyValue)

But this never returns true either. They are definitely the same enum value. Also, I can't explicitly cast anything in this if statement because there are many other properties in the object of all different types (not just enums) that need this same check, for example:

class MyObject
{
    [MyAttribute(ExclusionValue = MyEnum.None)]
    public MyEnum EnumProperty { get; set; }

    [MyAttribute(ExclusionValue = false)]
    public bool BoolProperty { get; set; }
}

Edit

They will only ever be value types (no structs) or strings.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 94

Answers (1)

Blorgbeard
Blorgbeard

Reputation: 103585

You need to unbox the object you got via reflection to a MyEnum.

Currently you are comparing objects for equality, which tests for reference equality. They are not the same object, so it returns false.

This should behave as you expect:

if (exclusionValue == (MyEnum)propertyValue)

Or, you can call the Equals method instead:

if (exclusionValue.Equals(propertyValue))

Which will call the Enum.Equals method, which will do the right thing.

Upvotes: 1

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