maps of classes of enums

Seasons' Greetings to all,

I'm building a class to generate reports. The report's format will be different based on which state requests the report.
To this end my class has several enums which define the structure of the output line for a specific state.

I'd like to have a mapping between stateCodes and their associated enums. Then the report-writing method accepts a stateCode and a row of data, uses the statecode to lookup which enum to use, apply that enum's formatting to the row of data, and return a string.

Here's a really stripped-down version:


As usual, any ideas, suggestiong, pointers, examples and positive criticism are always welcome!

TIA,

Still-learning Steve

I don't understand why those classes are enums. Why not just provide an abstract class and have each state override it appropriately?

The fact that your Layout_AZ and Layout_TX are exactly the same except for two integer values suggests that there is something not quite right about this approach. Also, unless you're designing framework, resorting to reflection is usually a huge clue that one is looking at a problem the wrong way.

You don't need enums. You need an abstract Layout class that has concrete implementations for AZ and TX.

@Paul: jinx!

thanks for your suggestions! I got a little further with my approach with


but will try it your way as well. I went with enums because they are inherently static.

Thanks again for your replies!

Happy New Year,

Still-learning Steve

Stuart Rogers wrote:I went with enums because they are inherently static.

That really isn't a good reason for choosing enums. And looking for something which is static isn't usually a good idea, either.

and besides, no matter how you slice it, something's going to have map the state being used to the associated enum/ extended class

ok, I got a little further

What now? You need some methods to override. Let me suggest "formatStateCode" and "formatDistrictCode" to start with? Of course I'm just guessing because your original code didn't actually do anything.

Also let me suggest this for your startup code, to reduce the need for reflection elsewhere in your code:

ah, clever. I'll tinker with this new approach over the next few days.

Thanks and Happy New Year!


Still-learning Steve

I hacked at this a bit more, stripped out all the enum stuff, to come up with


This looks syntactically correct but doesn't give me what I want:

In Eclipse I can get as far as RptXXX.Layoutt.lookupByState("AZ"). but it can't see Layoutt_AZ's buildOutputRecord method., probably because the map sets its objects to Layoutt and loses further class data

Any more suggestions/ideas/hints/examples out there to finish this off?

TIA,

Still-learning Steve

here's the piece I was missing


I can test it once I've got some data in my tables to run the reports against. Will post my results.


Thanks to all,

Still-learning Steve

This works great:


so now in my application I can call forth:


Nice!

Thanks to all who responded!

CASE CLOSED

Still-learning Steve