Re: Enum best practices

From: Kevin Menard (kmenar..ervprise.com)
Date: Thu Jan 17 2008 - 15:20:44 EST

  • Next message: Michael Gentry: "Re: Enum best practices"

    On 1/17/08 9:47 AM, "Michael Gentry" <blacknex..mail.com> wrote:

    > Ari, I was going to mention on the other thread (with Kevin) that it
    > would be nice if you could map the enumerated values in Cayenne
    > Modeler. I believe Andrus even mentioned keeping the mapping in the
    > XML files, too. The modeler could generate the code for the enums,
    > too, as you said. This would free the user from having to write the
    > boilerplate code themselves. I still see needing two types of
    > enumerations -- integer and string based values. I can't really see
    > the need for floating point values at this time.

    Yes, what Ari mentioned sounds nice.

    I could see value in "composite" enums as well, though. I can't think of a
    better term, but they're basically enums with fields that could then be
    mapped to DB columns.

    For example, we use FedEx to process our shipments. The FedEx API has codes
    for each service, but the codes are not really in a suitable form for a
    customer. So, we store the code and the textual description as two columns
    in the table. The set of values is largely fixed, but as we offer new
    shipping methods (e.g., we started offering USPS), we added more rows to the
    table.

    It'd be nice if there were a way to map the rows in that table as enum
    instances (Java5 or otherwise) automatically. The code could be
    considerably simplified (I'm a big fan of switching with Java5 enums), but
    maintain the flexibility of a DB backend.

    I'm acutely aware that this is likely a pipedream though, given the invasive
    nature of it all.

    -- 
    Kevin
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0.0 : Thu Jan 17 2008 - 15:21:23 EST