ConnectionState is an enum, not a string

[masonwheeler]

Type of issue

Outdated article

Description

The State property's description on this page says "Gets a string that describes the state of the connection." and down below, "The format of the string returned depends on the specific type of connection you are using."

But the property is not typed as string at all, but as ConnectionState, which is an enum.

The State property description on the DbConnection class page likewise needs to be fixed.

Page URL

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.data.common.dbconnection.state?view=net-8.0#system-data-common-dbconnection-state

Content source URL

https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet-api-docs/blob/main/xml/System.Data.Common/DbConnection.xml

Document Version Independent Id

918743a2-34ae-6bb2-ca98-2988508799b4

Article author

@dotnet-bot

I couldn't figure out the best area label to add to this issue. If you have write-permissions please help me learn by adding exactly one area label.

I couldn't figure out the best area label to add to this issue. If you have write-permissions please help me learn by adding exactly one area label.

[dotnet-policy-service]

Tagging subscribers to this area: @roji, @ajcvickers

[roji]

@masonwheeler thanks for flagging this - is #10509 sufficient or did you see another thing needing fixing?

[masonwheeler]

@roji It's not clear to me how the XML maps to the documentation, but I notice it's only changing one thing. Will this fix both pages?

[roji]

Yeah, each XML is responsible for a type (e.g. DbConnection) and all the members contained within, that includes all pages generated for that type.

[masonwheeler]

Sounds good then.

Related: The ConnectionState page contains contradictory information. At the top, it shows the enum with a [Flags] attribute and states, "This enumeration supports a bitwise combination of its member values." But at the bottom, it says, "The values in this enumeration are not designed to be used as a set of flags."

So... which is it?

[roji]

The enum itself does have the [Flags] enum, but the values aren't exactly defined accordingly; for example, one would expect the Fetching/Executing to also be Open, but they aren't. This is a very old type, and there are probably a few design issues around it.