Re: enums, using methods as initializers

From:
Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.spamfilter@virtualinfinity.net>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:17:27 -0800
Message-ID:
<K_Cdnd9EiP_0KqHanZ2dnUVZ_jCdnZ2d@wavecable.com>
mekane wrote:

Mikhail Teterin wrote:

Hello!

I would like to be able to initialize fields of an enum with /methods/
(of
another Class).

Here is the (non-working) example:

 import java.util.*;
 import java.sql.*;

 public enum Field {
  FIELD1 (ResultSet.getString),
  FIELD2 (ResultSet.getDouble),
  ...
  FIELDN (ResultSet.getTimestamp);

  private java.lang.reflect.Method extract;
 }

the idea is to be able to get all fields from a given ResultSet by going
through the list of Fields and extracting the column from the ResultSet.

Something like:

 public void print(ResultSet rs)
 {
  for (Field f : Field.values())
   System.out.println(f + ":\t" + rs.f.extract(f));
 }

Does the above stand a chance of being turned into a real Java code?

Thanks for ideas!

 -mi


I assume you've looked at:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/language/enums.html

I had a case where I needed to do something similar to this, and I tried
overriding a method on each element of the enum. I didn't like defining
big methods inside the constructor, so I actually went with the method
described in the article that uses a switch.

So you would have one method defined in the enum like:

  public String extract( Resultset arg ){
    switch ( this )
    {
      case FIELD1:
        return arg.getString();
      case FIELD2:
        return arg.getDouble();
      ...
      case FIELDN:
        return resultSet.getTimestamp();
    }
  }

then you could iterate over the values of the enum and do f.extract(rs)

-marty

That is very specifically a Bad Idea!
f.extract should NOT have a switch statement, but instead should be
polymorphic.

--
Daniel Pitts' Tech Blog: <http://virtualinfinity.net/wordpress/>

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