How do i change the printing output for an enum, as enum values are all upper case

Question

What I am trying to do
- I have an enum with 3 parts : LIQUID POWDER and UNKNOWN
- need to print this out as : Liquid or Powder
- not printing anything if its unknown
What I have tried
-make a String var type and set it to null
-I made an if-else chain that checks what enum value that the obj has and changes the comp of String type.
-and a boolean that allows printing if it's not UNKNOWN
- for some reason, i am just getting a blank

is there a simpler way of converting the enum values to lowercase strings?
what is wrong in what i am doing?

my code
the enum class

public enum FoundationType
{
   LIQUID,
   POWDER,
   UNKNOWN
}

my method for printing

 public  String toString(){
        String type = null;
        boolean isUnknown = false;

        if (thisType == FoundationType.POWDER ){type = "Powder";}
        else if(thisType == FoundationType.LIQUID ){type = "Liquid";}
        else if(thisType == FoundationType.UNKNOWN ){isUnknown = true;}

        String output = null;

        if(isUnknown){output = "Foundation" + System.lineSeparator()  + 
            "Inventory ID :"+get_UniqueProductID()+""+ System.lineSeparator();
        }else{
            output = "Foundation" + System.lineSeparator() + "Base Is " +type+ "" + System.lineSeparator() + 
            "Inventory ID :"+get_UniqueProductID()+""+ System.lineSeparator()
            + System.lineSeparator()+ System.lineSeparator();
        }
        return output;
    }

where is thisType defined? perhaps you need to send the FoundationType enum to your toString() method as a parameter? — RAZ_Muh_Taz, Oct 18 '16 at 23:31
can you show us what you are calling the toString() method on? — RAZ_Muh_Taz, Oct 18 '16 at 23:42

score -1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 19 '16 at 00:05

You can use toString method of enum to convert it to String like: FoundationType.LIQUID.toString()

In order to capitalize it, you can use WordUtils.capitalize() of Apache Commons. http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-lang/apidocs/org/apache/commons/lang3/text/WordUtils.html

How do i change the printing output for an enum, as enum values are all upper case

1 Answers1