Enum “Inheritance”

Question

I have an enum in a low level namespace. I'd like to provide a class or enum in a mid level namespace that "inherits" the low level enum.

namespace low
{
   public enum base
   {
      x, y, z
   }
}

namespace mid
{
   public enum consume : low.base
   {
   }
}

I'm hoping that this is possible, or perhaps some kind of class that can take the place of the enum consume which will provide a layer of abstraction for the enum, but still let an instance of that class access the enum.

Thoughts?

EDIT: One of the reasons I haven't just switched this to consts in classes is that the low level enum is needed by a service that I must consume. I have been given the WSDLs and the XSDs, which define the structure as an enum. The service cannot be changed.

Answer 1

I know this answer is kind of late but this is what I ended up doing:

public class BaseAnimal : IEquatable<BaseAnimal>
{
    public string Name { private set; get; }
    public int Value { private set; get; }

    public BaseAnimal(int value, String name)
    {
        this.Name = name;
        this.Value = value;
    }

    public override String ToString()
    {
        return Name;
    }

    public bool Equals(BaseAnimal other)
    {
        return other.Name == this.Name && other.Value == this.Value;
    }
}

public class AnimalType : BaseAnimal
{
    public static readonly BaseAnimal Invertebrate = new BaseAnimal(1, "Invertebrate");

    public static readonly BaseAnimal Amphibians = new BaseAnimal(2, "Amphibians");

    // etc        
}

public class DogType : AnimalType
{
    public static readonly BaseAnimal Golden_Retriever = new BaseAnimal(3, "Golden_Retriever");

    public static readonly BaseAnimal Great_Dane = new BaseAnimal(4, "Great_Dane");

    // etc        
}

Then I am able to do things like:

public void SomeMethod()
{
    var a = AnimalType.Amphibians;
    var b = AnimalType.Amphibians;

    if (a == b)
    {
        // should be equal
    }

    // call method as
    Foo(a);

    // using ifs
    if (a == AnimalType.Amphibians)
    {
    }
    else if (a == AnimalType.Invertebrate)
    {
    }
    else if (a == DogType.Golden_Retriever)
    {
    }
    // etc          
}

public void Foo(BaseAnimal typeOfAnimal)
{
}

Answer 2

This is not possible. Enums cannot inherit from other enums. In fact all enums must actually inherit from System.Enum. C# allows syntax to change the underlying representation of the enum values which looks like inheritance, but in actuality they still inherit from System.enum.

See section 8.5.2 of the CLI spec for the full details. Relevant information from the spec

• All enums must derive from System.Enum
• Because of the above, all enums are value types and hence sealed

Answer 3

You can achieve what you want with classes:

public class Base
{
    public const int A = 1;
    public const int B = 2;
    public const int C = 3;
}
public class Consume : Base
{
    public const int D = 4;
    public const int E = 5;
}

Now you can use these classes similar as when they were enums:

int i = Consume.B;

Update (after your update of the question):

If you assign the same int values to the constants as defined in the existing enum, then you can cast between the enum and the constants, e.g:

public enum SomeEnum // this is the existing enum (from WSDL)
{
    A = 1,
    B = 2,
    ...
}
public class Base
{
    public const int A = (int)SomeEnum.A;
    //...
}
public class Consume : Base
{
    public const int D = 4;
    public const int E = 5;
}

// where you have to use the enum, use a cast:
SomeEnum e = (SomeEnum)Consume.B;

Answer 4

Enums cannot be derrived from other enums, but only from int, uint, short, ushort, long, ulong, byte and sbyte.

Like Pascal said, you can use other enum's values or constants to initialize an enum value, but that's about it.

Answer 5

This is what I did. What I've done differently is use the same name and the new keyword on the "consuming" enum. Since the name of the enum is the same, you can just mindlessly use it and it will be right. Plus you get intellisense. You just have to manually take care when setting it up that the values are copied over from the base and keep them sync'ed. You can help that along with code comments. This is another reason why in the database when storing enum values I always store the string, not the value. Because if you are using automatically assigned increasing integer values those can change over time.

// Base Class for balls 
public class BaseBall
{
    // keep synced with subclasses!
    public enum Sizes
    {
        Small,
        Medium,
        Large
    }
}

public class VolleyBall : BaseBall
{
    // keep synced with base class!
    public new enum Sizes
    {
        Small = BaseBall.Sizes.Small,
        Medium = BaseBall.Sizes.Medium,
        Large = BaseBall.Sizes.Large,
        SmallMedium,
        MediumLarge,
        Ginormous
    }
}

Answer 6

Enums are not actual classes, even if they look like it. Internally, they are treated just like their underlying type (by default Int32). Therefore, you can only do this by "copying" single values from one enum to another and casting them to their integer number to compare them for equality.