C# check value exist in constant - asp.net-2.0

Question

I have declared my c# application constant this way:
public class Constant
public struct profession
{
public const string STUDENT = "Student";
public const string WORKING_PROFESSIONAL = "Working Professional";
public const string OTHERS = "Others";
}
public struct gender
{
public const string MALE = "M";
public const string FEMALE = "F";
}
}
My validation function:
public static bool isWithinAllowedSelection(string strValueToCheck, object constantClass)
{
//convert object to struct
//loop thru all const in struct
//if strValueToCheck matches any of the value in struct, return true
//end of loop
//return false
}
During runtime, I will like pass in the user inputted value and the struct to check if the value exist in the struct. The struct can be profession and gender. How can I achieve it?
Example:
if(!isWithinAllowedSelection(strInput,Constant.profession)){
response.write("invalid profession");
}
if(!isWithinAllowedSelection(strInput,Constant.gender)){
response.write("invalid gender");
}

Answer 1

You probably want to use enums, not structs with constants.
Enums gives you a lot of possibilities, it is not so hard to use its string values to save it to the database etc.
public enum Profession
{
Student,
WorkingProfessional,
Others
}
And now:
To check existence of value in Profession by value's name:
var result = Enum.IsDefined(typeof(Profession), "Retired"));
// result == false
To get value of an enum as a string:
var result = Enum.GetName(typeof(Profession), Profession.Student));
// result == "Student"
If you really can't avoid using value names with whitespaces or other special characters, you can use DescriptionAttribute:
public enum Profession
{
Student,
[Description("Working Professional")] WorkingProfessional,
[Description("All others...")] Others
}
And now, to get description from Profession value you can use this code (implemented here as an extension method):
public static string Description(this Enum e)
{
var members = e.GetType().GetMember(e.ToString());
if (members != null && members.Length != 0)
{
var attrs = members.First()
.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DescriptionAttribute), false);
if (attrs != null && attrs.Length != 0)
return ((DescriptionAttribute) attrs.First()).Description;
}
return e.ToString();
}
This method fetches description defined in attribute and if there's none, returns value name. Usage:
var e = Profession.WorkingProfessional;
var result = e.Description();
// result == "Working Professional";