Any alternative to extending an enum in java?

Question

I am in a situation where I have an enum which has grown huge and gotten out of control on maintenance. I wanted to delegate responsibility to each class. However, there are certain common ones which qualifies as required in more than one class. I was thinking of defining a parent enum with necessary common ones defined and then extend parent enum by respective class's enums to add class specific entry. Java does not support extending enum. Does anyone know an better alternative?

I appreciate any suggestions provided. Thanks!

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1414755/can-enums-be-subclassed-to-add-new-elements — Jordi Castilla, Apr 03 '15 at 09:10
If most of the values (as I understand from the question) are needed by only one class, why are they in that enum? It appears that you should have a bunch of integer constants defined inside every of your classes, and then something like a `Constants` class with the common options needed by more classes. — lodo, Apr 03 '15 at 09:13

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 03 '15 at 09:15

You should maybe switch to integers, like lots of JavaSE APIs do.

class Constants
{
    public static final int COMMON_CONSTANT_1 = 1;
    public static final int COMMON_CONSTANT_2 = 2;
    ....
    static final int END_OF_COMMON_CONSTANTS = 127;
}

class AClass
{
    public static final int CONSTANT_NEEDED_BY_ACLASS = 
         Constants.END_OF_COMMON_CONSTANTS + 1;
    public static final int ANOTHER_CONSTANT =
         CONSTANT_NEEDED_BY_ACLASS + 1;
    ....
}

This way any class can use the common constants and extend them with custom ones, without interfering with each other.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 03 '15 at 09:15

0

If your enumeration has only one property , you can move around in a file.properties , otherwise you may create inner enum class in a class to have everything neater

answered Apr 03 '15 at 09:15

Andrea Cip

41
4

Any alternative to extending an enum in java?

2 Answers2