Persisting KSPField that is an enum

[codepoet]

I have hit a snag trying to ues an enum as the type of a KSPField that needs to be persisted. My code looks a bit liek this:

public enum DockingPortHatchStatus
    {
        NOT_DOCKING_PORT = 0,
        DOCKING_PORT_HATCH_CLOSED = 1,
        DOCKING_PORT_HATCH_OPEN = 2
    }



public class ModuleConnectedLivingSpace : PartModule
    {

...

        [KSPField(isPersistant = true)]
        public DockingPortHatchStatus hatchStatus = DockingPortHatchStatus.DOCKING_PORT_HATCH_CLOSED; // Default to closed hatches. Id the part has been saved this will be overritten when it is loaded. If the part is not saved, and it is not a docking port, then it will be overritten in OnStart.

...

}

In the log I get the error:

Cannot parse Enum value: enumType is not an Enum type.

Does anyone know how to use an emnum as a KSPField that gets persisted?

[notfirestorm]

This may not be the proper way to do it, but what I'd do is this: Make the KSPField of type int, and when you read or write that enum, cast it either to the int or enum type.

Something like...

[KSPField(isPersistant = true)]
public int hatchStatus = 1; //DOCKING_PORT_HATCH_CLOSED

...
DockingPortHatchStatus hatchStatusEnum = (DockingPortHatchStatus) hatchStatus;
if (DockingPortHatchStatus.DOCKING_PORT_HATCH_OPEN == hatchStatusEnum)
{
hatchStatus = (int) DockingPortHatchStatus.DOCKING_PORT_HATCH_CLOSED;
}

KSPField only supports limited types, for example, floats are good but doubles are not (had to do some funny stuff to work around a rounding error from that )

Edited March 1, 2014 by notfirestorm
Added code tags

[codepoet]

ok, thanks.

[MOARdV]

An alternative is to make the KSPField a string, and have a private field to hold the enum. I *think* you can do something like

if(hatchStatus == DockingPortHatchStatus.DOCKING_PORT_HATCH_OPEN.ToString())
{
    hatchStatusEnum = DockingPortHatchStatus.DOCKING_PORT_HATCH_OPEN;
}
...etc...

I don't know if the ToString is going to be just "DOCKING_PORT_HATCH_OPEN" in this case, or if it includes the enum name as well.

[stupid_chris]

Enum <--> string Conversion is very, VERY slow. It's using Reflection and that explains it all. The best way to do it is to create a Dictionary<EnumType, string> and store the enum/string pairs in there, and simply convert from one another using the dictionary. Dictionaries are quite fast and convenient.

[codepoet]

MY solution was to asign values to the enum, and use a cast to an int instead.