Selecting a value from an enumeration of appropriate values is a common task. A ComboBox is a well suited GUI element for that purpose. The ComboBox shows textual representations of all available values.

How do we get "nice" texts? A simple solution is the use of friendly names for the values, as does e.g.System.Drawing.Color[^] . But there is a drawback: a name must not contain white space (e.g. "Dark Blue" was changed to "DarkBlue").

A more advanced solution uses the Description attribute[^]. A converter, e.g. Description Enum TypeConverter[^], is used for the conversions from the value to the string and vice versa. Also a converter implementing WPF'sIValueConverter interface is available: Using DescriptionAttribute for enumerations bound to a ComboBox[^] .

When it comes to localization, things become more complicated. Most examples on the web only show how to get localized strings into the ComboBox, but omit the step from a user selection back to the enum value. Only Sacha Barber's great article Binding and Using Friendly Enums in WPF[^] shows how to do a two-way binding.


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