Flags and Enums

A lot of Record data is exposed via flags and enums. All of known enum types and their options are defined explicitly for strongly typed use.

Normal Enum

Certain fields have a certain subset of valid options. These are exposed as enums, where only one choice can be made.

For example, Oblivion's Creature has an enum that looks like this:

public enum CreatureTypeEnum
{
    Creature = 0,
    Daedra = 1,
    Undead = 2,
    Humanoid = 3,
    Horse = 4,
    Giant = 5,
}

Setting a Normal Enum

creature.CreatureType = CreatureTypeEnum.Undead;

Switching an Enum

If you want to do different things depending on the value of an enum, you can do a switch

switch (creature.CreatureType)
{
    case CreatureType.Creature:
        break;
    case CreatureType.Daedra:
        break;
    case CreatureType.Undead:
        break;
    case CreatureType.Humanoid:
        break;
    case CreatureType.Horse:
        break;
    case CreatureType.Giant:
        break;
}

Unknown Flags

Enums only list the values that are known and have "nicknames". Sometimes mods have values for things that are "unknown" and don't have a name. Rather than listing these, Mutagen opts to only list known values to keep things clean.

You can still get at and set these values, though. Enums in C# are backed by int (or other numeric primitives), and so you can write code like this:

// Set an enum to an unknown value
CreatureType e = (CreatureType)13; 

// Check if it's that unknown value
if (e == (CreatureType)13)
{
    // Will enter this statement
}

With this style API, you can still access all unknown values as needed.

Flags Enum

Certain fields are allowed to have several values, and so make use of C#'s flags enum systems.

For example, Oblivion NPC's flags look like this:

[Flags]
public enum NPCFlag
{
    Female = 0x000001,
    Essential = 0x000002,
    Respawn = 0x000008,
    AutoCalcStats = 0x000010,
    ...
}

This enum can then be used to specify several flags on an NPC:

// Mark the NPC an essential female
npc.Flags = NPCFlag.Female | NPCFlag.Essential;

// And then add that we also want it to auto calc stats
npc.Flags |= NPCFlag.AutoCalcStats;

You can read up on C# flag enums on stack overflow for more API tricks.

In addition to the built in C# features, Mutagen has some helper methods such as

npc.Flags = npc.Flags.SetFlag(NPCFlag.AutoCalcStats, true);

if (npc.Flags.HasFlag(NPCFlag.AutoCalcStats))
{
}

Info

HasFlag and SetFlag aren't included in C# by default, but are part of the Mutagen ecosystem.