title: How do I get an enum value from my ASP.NET MVC property?
body: <p>In my ViewModel, I have a property that creates an enumeration for my form's drop down menu.</p>
  
  <pre><code>public enum Colors
      {
      [Description("Dark Red")]
      DarkRed = 0,
      [Description("Orange")]
      Orange = 1,
      [Description("Blue")]
      Blue = 2
      }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My Helper returns:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;select id="ddlColor"&gt;
      &lt;option value="DarkRed"&gt;Dark Red&lt;/option&gt;
      &lt;option value="Orange"&gt;Orange&lt;/option&gt;
      &lt;option value="Blue"&gt;Blue&lt;/option&gt;
  &lt;/select&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, when I call the property in my model, I only get the name and not the value, e.g. <strong>DarkRed</strong> and not <strong>0</strong>.</p>
  
  <pre><code>model.Selections = InsertForm(model.Color);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How can I cast this in my model reference so I get the <em>value</em> from the enum?   </p>