Java Buzz Forum - Java Enum Code Example - SoftDrinks, How to use Enum in Java

Enum is a useful feature of Java and best way to represent fixed number of things e.g. number of planet in solar system, number of state order can be or simply number of days in a week. Java Enum are different than there predecessor on other languages like C and C++, where enum is just a wrapper around integer constant. Enum in Java is a full blown type like class and interface, they can have constructor (though only private constructors are permitted for Enum), they can override methods, they can have member variables, they can even declare methods, can implement interfaces and have specialized high performance Map and Set implementation in form of EnumMap and EnumSet. I have written a lot of articles in Enum, exploring it's different lesser known features and involving some best practices, but several times I receive request for simple Enum examples, and that's why, I am sharing this, one of the most simple example of Enum in Java. In this Enum example, I have used Enum to represent SoftDrink in a convenient store. My Enum class has four types of soft drinks Coke, Pepsi, Soda and Lime. To demonstrate Enum can have constructor and member variables, I have provided them title and price, and to demonstrate Enum can override methods, I have overridden toString() method, which returns custom title passed to each SoftDrink. Apart from custom title, you can also avail implicit name() method of Enum to get an String representation of Enum constant, it returns exact String literal used to declare Enum constant, for example SoftDrink.COKE.name() will return COKE while SoftDrink.COKE.toString() will return Coke here. Let's see the example first and later I will explain some key things about Enum in Java.


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