Add Guard fro SmartEnum Out of Range

[MarkLFT]

Plase add a guard for Smart Enums Out of Range, just like a regular enum.

Please refer to original discussion at https://github.com/ardalis/GuardClauses/issues/346#issuecomment-2137649866

[Asafima]

Hey, I have read the original discussion. As I see it, there are a few options for implementing this:

1. Create a Guard folder with Guard class and interfaces, same as in GuardClauses repo, so that API consumers use it as: Guard.Against.SmartEnumOutOfRange(someValue)

2. Create another static method in the SmartEnum abstract class - in that case the usage would be: TestEnum.ThrowIfOutOfRange(TValue value)

3. Use GuardClauses nuget package as a dependency - least preferred, probably a bad idea and a major overhead for this small use case.

In any case, the method should check all enum options and find a matching one - it's actually IsDefined. What do you think @ardalis ?

[ardalis]

My issue with option 1 is that I'm sure many projects already use both Ardalis.SmartEnum and Ardalis.GuardClauses, so the potential for naming conflicts is a problem. Let's say we add a Guard class, would it live in the namespace Ardalis.SmartEnum.Guard (the folder you suggest), and would it use the same extension method approach? If so, what happens if a file includes a using statement for Ardalis.GuardClauses? Now you have to fully qualify the extension method which is ugly.

Regarding option 3, I do think that most projects that use SmartEnum quite likely also use GuardClauses, but I wouldn't want to force any consumer to do so. So I agree, not ideal.

That leaves your option 2 of just emulating what Microsoft did with their Exception types and add ThrowIfSomeCondition methods to the Enum itself. I don't care for that syntax much myself as it doesn't provide the same clarify of Guard.Against (or even Assert) but at least there's some precedent for it.

A 4th option would be to create a new package on the SmartEnum side, like Ardalis.SmartEnum.GuardClauses which would reference Ardalis.GuardClauses and SmartEnum. This is clean from a dependency and namespace standpoint and lets us reuse the same Guard.Against pattern/usage, but at the cost of adding another package to maintain and depend upon (and a package that will probably only have a single file in it, at that).

Open to more comments/ideas/discussion.