How do I declare a nested enum?

I was looking for something similar as a way to create lightweight, hierarchical channel ID's for a logging system. I'm not quite sure this was worth the effort, but I had fun putting it together, and I learned something new about operator overloading and lizards in the process.

I've built a mechanism that supports this notation:

public static class Animal
{
    public static readonly ID dog = 1;
    public static class dogs
    {
        public static readonly ID bulldog = dog[0];
        public static readonly ID greyhound = dog[1];
        public static readonly ID husky = dog[3];
    }

    public static readonly ID cat = 2;
    public static class cats
    {
        public static readonly ID persian = cat[0];
        public static readonly ID siamese = cat[1];
        public static readonly ID burmese = cat[2];
    }

    public static readonly ID reptile = 3;
    public static class reptiles
    {
        public static readonly ID snake = reptile[0];
        public static class snakes
        {
            public static readonly ID adder = snake[0];
            public static readonly ID boa = snake[1];
            public static readonly ID cobra = snake[2];
        }

        public static readonly ID lizard = reptile[1];
        public static class lizards
        {
            public static readonly ID gecko = lizard[0];
            public static readonly ID komodo = lizard[1];
            public static readonly ID iguana = lizard[2];
            public static readonly ID chameleon = lizard[3];
        }
    }
}

And which you can use like so:

void Animalize()
{
    ID rover = Animal.dogs.bulldog;
    ID rhoda = Animal.dogs.greyhound;
    ID rafter = Animal.dogs.greyhound;

    ID felix = Animal.cats.persian;
    ID zorro = Animal.cats.burmese;

    ID rango = Animal.reptiles.lizards.chameleon;

    if (rover.isa(Animal.dog))
        Console.WriteLine("rover is a dog");
    else
        Console.WriteLine("rover is not a dog?!");

    if (rover == rhoda)
        Console.WriteLine("rover and rhoda are the same");

    if (rover.super == rhoda.super)
        Console.WriteLine("rover and rhoda are related");

    if (rhoda == rafter)
        Console.WriteLine("rhoda and rafter are the same");

    if (felix.isa(zorro))
        Console.WriteLine("er, wut?");

    if (rango.isa(Animal.reptile))
        Console.WriteLine("rango is a reptile");

    Console.WriteLine("rango is an {0}", rango.ToString<Animal>());
}

That code compiles and produces the following output:

rover is a dog
rover and rhoda are related
rhoda and rafter are the same
rango is a reptile
rango is an Animal.reptiles.lizards.chameleon

Here's the ID struct that makes it work:

public struct ID
{
    public static ID none;

    public ID this[int childID]
    {
        get { return new ID((mID << 8) | (uint)childID); }
    }

    public ID super
    {
        get { return new ID(mID >> 8); }
    }

    public bool isa(ID super)
    {
        return (this != none) && ((this.super == super) || this.super.isa(super));
    }

    public static implicit operator ID(int id)
    {
        if (id == 0)
        {
            throw new System.InvalidCastException("top level id cannot be 0");
        }
        return new ID((uint)id);
    }

    public static bool operator ==(ID a, ID b)
    {
        return a.mID == b.mID;
    }

    public static bool operator !=(ID a, ID b)
    {
        return a.mID != b.mID;
    }

    public override bool Equals(object obj)
    {
        if (obj is ID)
            return ((ID)obj).mID == mID;
        else
            return false;
    }

    public override int GetHashCode()
    {
        return (int)mID;
    }

    private ID(uint id)
    {
        mID = id;
    }

    private readonly uint mID;
}

This makes use of:

  • a 32-bit uint as the underlying type
  • multiple small numbers stuffed into an integer with bit shifts (you get maximum four levels of nested ID's with 256 entries at each level -- you could convert to ulong for more levels or more bits per level)
  • ID 0 as the special root of all ID's (possibly ID.none should be called ID.root, and any id.isa(ID.root) should be true)
  • implicit type conversion to convert an int into an ID
  • an indexer to chain ID's together
  • overloaded equality operators to support comparisons

Up to now everything's pretty efficient, but I had to resort to reflection and recursion for ToString, so I cordoned it off in an extension method, as follows:

using System;
using System.Reflection;

public static class IDExtensions
{
    public static string ToString<T>(this ID id)
    {
        return ToString(id, typeof(T));
    }

    public static string ToString(this ID id, Type type)
    {
        foreach (var field in type.GetFields(BindingFlags.GetField | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Static))
        {
            if ((field.FieldType == typeof(ID)) && id.Equals(field.GetValue(null)))
            {
                return string.Format("{0}.{1}", type.ToString().Replace('+', '.'), field.Name);
            }
        }

        foreach (var nestedType in type.GetNestedTypes())
        {
            string asNestedType = ToString(id, nestedType);
            if (asNestedType != null)
            {
                return asNestedType;
            }
        }

        return null;
    }
}

Note that for this to work Animal could no longer be a static class, because static classes can't be used as type parameters, so I made it sealed with a private constructor instead:

public /*static*/ sealed class Animal
{
    // Or else: error CS0718: 'Animal': static types cannot be used as type arguments
    private Animal()
    {
    }
    ....

Phew! Thanks for reading. :-)


I would probably use a combination of enumerated bit fields and extension methods to achieve this. For example:

public enum Animal
{
   None = 0x00000000,
   AnimalTypeMask = 0xFFFF0000,
   Dog = 0x00010000,
   Cat = 0x00020000,
   Alsation = Dog | 0x00000001,
   Greyhound = Dog | 0x00000002,
   Siamese = Cat | 0x00000001
}

public static class AnimalExtensions
{
  public bool IsAKindOf(this Animal animal, Animal type)
  {
    return (((int)animal) & AnimalTypeMask) == (int)type);
  }
}

Update
In .NET 4, you can use the Enum.HasFlag method rather than roll your own extension.


You can use this method to get what you want though

public static class Animal {
    public enum Dog {
        BullDog,
        GreyHound,
        Huskey
    }

    public enum Cat {
        Tabby,
        Bombbay
    }
}

Tags:

C#

Enums

Recent Posts