Using enum in ConverterParameter

Question

I am building an application that can be used by many users. Each user is classified to one of the next Authentication levels:

public enum AuthenticationEnum
{
    User,
    Technitian,     
    Administrator,
    Developer
}

Some controls (such as buttons) are exposed only to certain levels of users. I have a property that holds the authentication level of the current user:

public AuthenticationEnum CurrentAuthenticationLevel { get; set; }

I want to bind this property to the 'Visibilty' property of some controls and pass a parameter to the Converter method, telling it what is the lowest authentication level that is able to see the control. For example:

<Button Visibility="{Binding Path=CurrentAuthenticationLevel, Converter={StaticResource AuthenticationToVisibility}, ConverterParameter="Administrator"}"/>

means that only 'Administrator' and 'Developer' can see the button. Unfortunately, the above code passes "Administrator" as a string. Of course I can use switch/case inside the converter method and convert the string to AuthenticationEnum. But this is ugly and prone to maintenance errors (each time the enum changes - the converter method would require a change also).

Is there a better way to pass a nontrivial object as a parameter?

Solution 1

ArsenMkrt's answer is correct,

Another way of doing this is to use the x:Static syntax in the ConverterParameter

<Button ...
        Visibility="{Binding Path=CurrentAuthenticationLevel,
            Converter={StaticResource AuthenticationToVisibility},
            ConverterParameter={x:Static local:AuthenticationEnum.Administrator}}"/>

And in the converter

public class AuthenticationToVisibility : IValueConverter
{
    public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
    {
        AuthenticationEnum authenticationEnum = (AuthenticationEnum)parameter;
        //...
    }
}

Solution 2

User

 (AuthenticationEnum)Enum.Parse(typeof(AuthenticationEnum),parameter)

to parse string as enumerator

Comments

[mahboub_mo]

Make the Fredrik's answer as answered Please.

[akjoshi]

See this for other formats and more details - stackoverflow.com/questions/359699/…

[linquize]

Using enum value directly has better performance than parsing string every time?

[Teoman shipahi]

How can we do it in Windows Store Apps? Seems like x:Static is not recognizable by this project type.