Enum to string in Unreal 5

In Unreal 5 you can convert enums to their string representation using UEnum::GetValueAsString and UEnum::GetNameStringByValue. These help with printing readable log messages.

We will use the following enum as an example:

UENUM()
enum class ECharacterCameraMode : uint8 {
    FirstPerson UMETA(DisplayName = "First Person"),
    ThirdPerson UMETA(DisplayName = "Third Person"),
    MAX UMETA(Hidden)
};

UEnum::GetValueAsString includes the enumerator type in the output whereas UEnum::GetNameStringByValue doesn’t. For ECharacterCameraMode::FirstPerson, they would return "ECharacterCameraMode::FirstPerson" and "FirstPerson" respectively.

UEnum::GetValueAsString

UEnum::GetValueAsString is a simple static member function.

void SomeActor::ChangeCameraMode(ECharacterCameraMode camera_mode) {
    UE_LOGFMT(LogTemp,
              Verbose,
              "Changing camera mode to {enum_value}.",
              ("enum_value", *UEnum::GetValueAsString(camera_mode)));
    // Rest of code...
}

Our output from this code is:

LogTemp: Verbose: Changing camera mode to ECharacterCameraMode::FirstPerson.

UEnum::GetNameStringByValue

UEnum::GetNameStringByValue is a little more awkward to use as you have to retrieve the enum’s UEnum reflection object using StaticEnum first. UEnum::GetValueAsString does the same thing internally.

auto const* const enum_ptr{StaticEnum<ECharacterCameraMode>()};

FString const enum_name{
    enum_ptr->GetNameStringByValue(
        static_cast<int64>(ECharacterCameraMode::FirstPerson)
    )
};

// enum_name = "FirstPerson"