Question

I have 4 different classes with a common superlass called WebService that each have the following enums declared in them (with different values):

public class GeoPlacesService extends WebService {

public enum RequestParam {
    LOCATION, RADIUS, SENSOR, KEY;

    @Override
    public String toString() {
       return super.toString().toLowerCase();
    }
}

public enum ResponseParam {
    STATUS, LATITUDE, LONGITUDE, NAME;

    @Override
    public String toString() {
       return super.toString().toLowerCase();
    }
}
}

Is it possible to somehow extract the enums’ toString() method to a common super class/enum? Right now, I have to duplicate the toString() 8 times for each enum…

Answer 1

As noted by others, you cannot have enums inherit from a common class. If you are doing something more complex than you are showing in your sample code, then you could have some sort of a helper function that is static somewhere that takes in the enum and does the calculations. Enums CAN implement an interface, so you can handle complex common toStrings that way potentially.