Enums

Note

Enums are not a built-in Luau type and they exist only in Roblox, but they're conceptually similar to other Luau data types and are something you'll work with frequently in Roblox development.

The enumeration data type, or Enum, is a fixed list of items. You can access enums through the global object called Enum. For a full list and their respective items, see Enums.

Enum items

To get all items of an enum, call the GetEnumItems() method on it. The following code sample demonstrates how to call GetEnumItems() on the PartType enum.

local partTypes = Enum.PartType:GetEnumItems()

for index, enumItem in partTypes do
	print(enumItem)
end

--[[
	Enum.PartType.Ball
	Enum.PartType.Block
	Enum.PartType.Cylinder
	Enum.PartType.Wedge
	Enum.PartType.CornerWedge
]]

Data type

The EnumItem is the data type for items in enums. An EnumItem has three properties:

Name — The name of the EnumItem.
Value — The numerical index of the EnumItem.
EnumType — The parent Enum of the EnumItem.

Some properties of objects can only be items of certain enums. For example, the Shape property of a Part object is an item of the PartType enum. The following code sample demonstrates how to print the properties of the PartType.Cylinder enum item.

print(Enum.PartType.Cylinder.Name) --> "Cylinder"
print(Enum.PartType.Cylinder.Value) --> 2
print(Enum.PartType.Cylinder.EnumType) --> PartType

To assign an EnumItem as the value of a property, use the full Enum declaration. You can also use the item's Name property as a string.

local Workspace = game:GetService("Workspace")

local part = Instance.new("Part") -- Create a new part

part.Shape = Enum.PartType.Cylinder -- By full enum item declaration (best practice)
part.Shape = "Cylinder" -- By enum item's name as a string

part.Parent = Workspace