Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!gegeweb.org!newsfeed.kamp.net!newsfeed.kamp.net!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail
From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@googlemail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: Enum mixin?
Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2011 11:44:12 +0200
Lines: 50
Message-ID: <9gi5vlFftnU1@mid.individual.net>
References: <WsudnUpWT_V6fDzTnZ2dnUVZ_vCdnZ2d@speakeasy.net> <9ge71qFkv0U1@mid.individual.net> <j7sufj$ekp$1@dont-email.me>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Trace: individual.net +ad1B37Lbe9v7+3lH5Wwowi3Imwc/v6td7uA6YKsQ6aTgZyV0=
Cancel-Lock: sha1:RmxKZbIgfOpP461aNuBwNCKSlIE=
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; WOW64; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20110929 Thunderbird/7.0.1
In-Reply-To: <j7sufj$ekp$1@dont-email.me>
Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:9110

On 22.10.2011 01:16, markspace wrote:
> On 10/21/2011 2:37 PM, Robert Klemme wrote:
>
>> On 21.10.2011 23:19, A. W. Dunstan wrote:
>>> I'm ok with leaving it the way it is, but does anyone know of a better
>>> approach? Preferably one that's not so complex that it's worse than my
>>> current state of affairs?
>
>> I don't think it gets any better. Even if you go away from enums and
>> create an abstract base class etc. you'll have to do the typing for the
>> values plus you need to take care of serialization etc.
>
> I would have thought that an abstract base class would get you what you
> need. Maybe I'm overlooking something. The second class here seems to
> remove a lot of boilerplate, esp considering my IDE will write the
> constructor for me (since it's the only one available).

Well, for Al's original code you would also benefit from some IDE 
boilerplate generation.  Plus, if you rename the int property according 
to sub class then you gain even less.

> package quicktest;
>
> import java.io.Serializable;
>
> public abstract class AbstactEnum implements Serializable {

For serialization to work like with enum (i.e. always only those 
instances in memory that you define in the class) you need to do 
considerably more.  That effectively will be a reimplementation of enum. 
  Plus, it can be tricky to get concurrency right etc.  And you have the 
drawback that you need to do it yourself.

 > ...
> final class CloudModel extends AbstactEnum {
 > ...
> }

I find that not really much less typing than the original code.  Plus, 
it's not an enum which means you lose the immediate information which 
for example IDE's provide when showing an icon for the type of language 
element.

Kind regards

	robert

-- 
remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end
http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/