eliminating duplicate Enum code
- by Don
Hi,
I have a large number of Enums that implement this interface:
/**
* Interface for an enumeration, each element of which can be uniquely identified by it's code
*/
public interface CodableEnum {
/**
* Get the element with a particular code
* @param code
* @return
*/
public CodableEnum getByCode(String code);
/**
* Get the code that identifies an element of the enum
* @return
*/
public String getCode();
}
A typical example is:
public enum IMType implements CodableEnum {
MSN_MESSENGER("msn_messenger"),
GOOGLE_TALK("google_talk"),
SKYPE("skype"),
YAHOO_MESSENGER("yahoo_messenger");
private final String code;
IMType (String code) {
this.code = code;
}
public String getCode() {
return code;
}
public IMType getByCode(String code) {
for (IMType e : IMType.values()) {
if (e.getCode().equalsIgnoreCase(code)) {
return e;
}
}
}
}
As you can imagine these methods are virtually identical in all implementations of CodableEnum. I would like to eliminate this duplication, but frankly don't know how. I tried using a class such as the following:
public abstract class DefaultCodableEnum implements CodableEnum {
private final String code;
DefaultCodableEnum(String code) {
this.code = code;
}
public String getCode() {
return this.code;
}
public abstract CodableEnum getByCode(String code);
}
But this turns out to be fairly useless because:
An enum cannot extend a class
Elements of an enum (SKYPE, GOOGLE_TALK, etc.) cannot extend a class
I cannot provide a default implementation of getByCode(), because DefaultCodableEnum is not itself an Enum. I tried changing DefaultCodableEnum to extend java.lang.Enum, but this doesn't appear to be allowed.
Any suggestions that do not rely on reflection?
Thanks,
Don
