Enums to SelectList

So you have an Enum and you want to get a human readable SelectList. Well here is the code to do that. The caveat here is that your enum class must be decorated with a description attribute. T in this case is your type of enumeration. Use it like Eums.ToSelectList<InterestTypes>();

public static class Enums
    {
        public static SelectList ToSelectList<T>() {
            var type = typeof (T);

            if (type.IsEnum) {
                var list = new List<object>();

                var members = type.GetMembers(BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.GetField);

                foreach (var memberInfo in members) {

                    var attribute = memberInfo.GetCustomAttributes(typeof (DescriptionAttribute), false).FirstOrDefault() as DescriptionAttribute;

                    var value = memberInfo.Name;

                    list.Add(attribute != null
                        ? new {Text = attribute.Description, Value = value}
                        : new {Text = value, Value = value});

                }
                return new SelectList(list, "Value", "Text");
            }

            throw new Exception("this method is purely for enumerations.");
        }

        public static T Parse<T>(string input)
        {
            return (T)Enum.Parse(typeof (T), input, true);
        }
    }

public enum InterestTypes : int
    {
        [Description("Attractions")] Attraction = 1,
        [Description("Events")] Event = 2,
        [Description("Restaurants")] Restaurant = 4,
        [Description("Schools")] SchoolDistrict = 5,
        [Description("Featured Developments")] FeaturedDevelopment = 6,
        [Description("Accommodations")] Accommodation = 7
    }

I also threw in a generic enum parser helper for free, have fun.