SmartEnum binding to [FromQuery] parameters

[laska-u]

I have a controller that binds string parameters from GET request into a class object.
I tried to use JsonConverter attributes with SmartEnum name serialization to automatically bind some parameter to a SmartEnum objects but it always NULL. Is there a workaround in this situation?

[ShawInnes]

Sorry this doesn't directly answer your question, but I've managed to find a workaround by making my [FromQuery] object use a string type... It's not as clean, but it does the job.

on my Controller:

    public async Task<IActionResult> GetPepVariants([FromQuery] GetAdminPepVariantsQuery request) =>

The request type:

public class GetAdminPepVariantsQuery
{
    ...
    public string? PepType { get; set; }
    ...
}

The EF query (or any other use)

query = query.Where(p => p.PepType == PepType.FromName(request.PepType, true));

[miroslavgrozdanovski]

@laska-u, when the data is not really a JSON coming from a request body, the JsonConverters are not executed. I just encountered the same issue, and there are two options that worked for me:

1. Use a custom TypeConverter as described in the Microsoft docs. Their example uses a GeoPoint type, but in our example with SmartEnums, you would just convert by calling FromValue(s).
2. If you are using .NET 7, you can just add a TryParse implementation in your SmartEnum, and the framework will call it. Here is an example of that in the release notes of .NET 7 preview 3.

You can also use a custom model binder, but I didn't try that option as it's not needed.

@ardalis, should any of these options be added into the library? I'm open on contributing if you agree.

[ardalis]

@miroslavgrozdanovski Sure, that would be great. I probably need to improve the docs for SmartEnum some time as well, to cover things like this that aren't necessarily "in the box"...