Enum helper method - avoid equals

by GarciaPL on Friday, 13 April 2018

Do you still write those special if statements for enums like myEnum.equals(myEnum.TEST) ? If yes, I might be able to share with you a small tip how to avoid it! It will be very beneficial for you because of your code might express itself without a word! Moreover, you might avoid those imports of your enum fields in every class where the comparison is going to be defined by if statement. It will say you a lot of time in case of changing name of enum field.

For instance, for the example defined below, only what you need to do in your code is -> if (operation.isCount()) {...} instead of if (operations.equals(Operation.COUNTA)) {...}

Check this post on Medium.com -> Use enum utility methods in Java ! Avoid equals at all costs!

import org.apache.commons.lang3.EnumUtils;

public enum Operation {

    COUNTA,
    SUM,
    NA;

    public static Operation parse(String input) {
        Operation operation = EnumUtils.getEnum(Operation.class, input);
        if (operation == null) {
            return NA;
        }
        return operation;
    }

    public boolean isCount() {
        return this == COUNTA;
    }

    public boolean isSum() {
        return this == SUM;
    }

    public boolean isCountOrSum() {
        return this == COUNTA || this == SUM;
    }

}