Question

The values in my enum are words that need to have spaces in them, but enums can’t have spaces in their values so it’s all bunched up. I want to override toString() to add these spaces where I tell it to.

I also want the enum to provide the correct enum when I use valueOf() on the same string that I added the spaces to.

For example:

public enum RandomEnum
{
     StartHere,
     StopHere
}

Call toString() on RandomEnum whose value is StartHere returns string "Start Here". Call valueof() on that same string ("Start Here") returns enum value StartHere.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

You can try out this code. Since you cannot override valueOf method you have to define a custom method (getEnum in the sample code below) which returns the value that you need and change your client to use this method instead.

public enum RandomEnum {

    StartHere("Start Here"),
    StopHere("Stop Here");

    private String value;

    RandomEnum(String value) {
        this.value = value;
    }

    public String getValue() {
        return value;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return this.getValue();
    }

    public static RandomEnum getEnum(String value) {
        for(RandomEnum v : values())
            if(v.getValue().equalsIgnoreCase(value)) return v;
        throw new IllegalArgumentException();
    }
}