Question

I’m very familiar with using Enums in other languages, but I’m having some difficulty in Java with a particular use.

The Sun documentation for Enums boldly states:

“Java programming language enums are far more powerful than their counterparts in other languages, which are little more than glorified integers.”

Well, that’s dandy, but I kind of need to have a constant datatype representation for each of the Enums, for comparison reasons in a switch statement. The situation is as follows: I’m constructing nodes which will represent a given space, or ‘slot’ in a maze graph, and these nodes must be able to be constructed from a 2D integer array which represents the maze. Here’s what I’ve got for the MazeNode class, which is currently where the problem is (the switch statement barks):

NOTE: I know this code does not function, due to the dynamic item in the case statement. It is there to illustrate what I’m after.

public class MazeNode
{
    public enum SlotValue
    {
        empty(0),
        start(1),
        wall(2),
        visited(3),
        end(9);

        private int m_representation;

        SlotValue(int representation)
        {
            m_representation = representation;
        }

        public int getRepresentation()
        {
            return m_representation;
        }
    }

    private SlotValue m_mazeNodeSlotValue;

    public MazeNode(SlotValue s)
    {
        m_mazeNodeSlotValue = s;
    }

    public MazeNode(int s)
    {

        switch(s)
        {
            case SlotValue.empty.getRepresentation():
                m_mazeNodeSlotValue = SlotValue.start;
                break;
            case SlotValue.end.getRepresentation():
                m_mazeNodeSlotValue = SlotValue.end;
                break;

        }
    }

    public SlotValue getSlotValue()
    {
        return m_mazeNodeSlotValue;
    }

}

So the code complains on the switch statement with “case expressions must be constant expressions” — I can see why the compiler might have trouble, since technically they are dynamic, but I’m not sure what approach to take to resolve this. Is there a better way?

The bottom line is I need the Enum to have corresponding integer values for comparison against the incoming 2D array of integers in the program.

Answer 1

You can use something like this:

import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

public class MazeNode {

    public enum SlotValue {
        empty(0), start(1), wall(2), visited(3), end(9);

        protected int m_representation;

        SlotValue(int representation) {
            m_representation = representation;

        }

        private static final Map<Integer, SlotValue> mapping = new HashMap<Integer, SlotValue>();

        static {
            for (SlotValue slotValue : SlotValue.values()) {
                mapping.put(slotValue.m_representation, slotValue);
            }
        }

        public static SlotValue fromRepresentation(int representation) {
            SlotValue slotValue = SlotValue.mapping.get(representation);
            if (slotValue == null)
                // throw your own exception
                throw new RuntimeException("Invalid representation:" + representation);
            return slotValue;
        }
    }

    private SlotValue m_mazeNodeSlotValue;

    public MazeNode(SlotValue s) {
        m_mazeNodeSlotValue = s;
    }

    public MazeNode(int s) {
        m_mazeNodeSlotValue = SlotValue.fromRepresentation(s);

    }

    public SlotValue getSlotValue() {
        return m_mazeNodeSlotValue;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        MazeNode m = new MazeNode(2);
        System.out.println(m.getSlotValue());
        m = new MazeNode(9);
        System.out.println(m.getSlotValue());
    }

}