Question

Is it possible to design your own Java Type, similar to an extensible enum?

For instance, I have user roles that a certain module uses and then a sub-package provides additional roles.

What would be involved on the JDK side of things?

Answer 1

Ok,

What I will do is write an interface and then several implementations for how to find users to notify in a particular event. The correct implementation will get injected at run-time and then it will do whatever it needs to do to find the correct users. That implementation may simply take arguments to configure the group name to look for and then return a list of users.

I am learning to use interfaces / design by contract more. Most of my development in the past has only ever had a single implementation so I saw this as a moot point and forgot about that tool / means.

Thanks,

Walter