Add support for enum name sources (EnumMemberAttribute and DescriptionAttribute)

[danielwinkler]

EnumMember enables control of the names of the enumerations as they are serialized, e.g.

[DataContract]
public enum Position
{
    [EnumMember(Value = "Emp")]
    Employee,
    [EnumMember(Value = "Mgr")]
    Manager,
    [EnumMember(Value = "Ctr")]
    Contractor,
}

from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.runtime.serialization.enummemberattribute?view=net-8.0

It would be great if those annotations could be used to map to and from strings, e.g. by changing the mapping strategy EnumMappingStrategy = EnumMappingStrategy.ByAnnotation.

[latonz]

The enum mapping strategies are currently used to map from one enum to another enum.
The EnumMemberAttribute.Value would only be considered for enum to string or for string to enum mappings, wouldn't it?

[danielwinkler]

Yes, you're correct, I didn't think the EnumMappingStrategy part through.
But it would still be nice to have this functionality configureable.

[latonz]

We thought about allowing the MapEnumValueAttribute for enum to/from string mappings which would address the same use-case with a different api surface (e.g. MapEnumValue(”Emp”, Position.Employee)]).
I think supporting both would be nice.
Opt-in could be done by a new property on the MapperAttribute named RespectEnumMemberAttribute or similar. For now I would not implement this configuration on an per enum level… Not sure about the default value though. I think for new users it would be nice to have it set to true, but this may break existing users… May be something to set to false by default until the next major release.
Another thing to discuss is how to handle duplicated string values. Do you know how the .NET APIs using this attribute handle this situation? We should probably emit an error if the duplicated enum members values are different. If the values are the same, the duplication could probably be ignored and the first value could be used.

Would be happy to accept a PR implementing this 😊

[latonz]

#1235 is asking for support of System.ComponentModel.DescriptionAttribute. It could be implemented similarly. The API may need to be adjusted for that. Instead of RespectEnumMemberAttribute we could introduce a EnumNameSource which can be set to MemberName (default), EnumMemberAttribute or DescriptionAttribute.