Question

I have written an enum class and I want to either get the attribute by type or get the type by attribute, but it seems impossible.

public enum AreaCode {
    area1(7927),
    area2(7928),
    area3(7929);

    private final int ac;

    AreaCode(int ac) {
        this.ac = ac;
    }

    int areaCode(){
        return ac;
    }

    AreaCode area(int n) {
        switch (n) {
            case 7927: return AreaCode.area1;
            case 7928: return AreaCode.area2;
            case 7929: return AreaCode.area3;
        }
    }
}

The code above will not compile. How to make area(int n) work?

Answer 1

All you need to do is add a default case so the method always returns something or throws an exception:

AreaCode area(int n){
    switch (n) {
    case 7927: return AreaCode.area1;
    case 7928: return AreaCode.area2;
    case 7929: return AreaCode.area3;
    default: return null;
    }
}

or perhaps better

AreaCode area(int n){
    switch (n) {
    case 7927: return AreaCode.area1;
    case 7928: return AreaCode.area2;
    case 7929: return AreaCode.area3;
    default: throw new IllegalArgumentException(String.valueOf(n));
    }
}