Enums is a neat topic that applies to most programming languages (not just Java)!

Enums

What is an Enum?

It's short for Enumerated Type, which just means that Java allows you to define your own special variable type. This becomes helpful when you would like to express something in more human readable terms. For example, let's say you would like to make an application that allows you to play a card game, like poker. Wouldn't it be nice if you could assign numeric values to all of the cards? Like so:

  • 2 -> 10 = 2 -> 10
  • Jack = 11
  • Queen = 12
  • King = 13
  • Ace = 14

Well, enums make this a piece of cake. Let's create a Card enum!

package com.howtoprogramwithjava.business;

public enum CardValue
{
  TWO(2),
  THREE(3),
  FOUR(4),
  FIVE(5),
  SIX(6),
  SEVEN(7),
  EIGHT(8),
  NINE(9),
  TEN(10),
  JACK(11),
  QUEEN(12),
  KING(13),
  ACE(14);

  private int cardValue;

  private CardValue (int value)
  {
    this.cardValue = value;
  }

  public int getCardValue() {
    return cardValue;
  }
}

Voila! We've now outlined what a CardValue enum could look like, now let's define what the Card's Suit could look like:

package com.howtoprogramwithjava.business;

public enum Suit
{
  HEARTS,
  SPADES,
  CLUBS,
  DIAMONDS;
}

Alrighty, so we have now defined what a Suit and CardValue looks like as Enums in Java. Things that you should note are that Enums need to have a package or private scoped constructor, if you try to specify anything else, Java will fail the compilation of your code. You can also get away with not defining a constructor at all (like I did with the Suit Enum). This is because you aren't meant to instantiate Enums, you're supposed to reference the values in a static way, as they are meant to be constant values.

If you don't quite understand what I mean when I say that the values should be referred to in a static way, just hang in there, I'll have an example soon. First, let's put the CardValue and Suit together into a Card object to pull everything together.

package com.howtoprogramwithjava.business;

public class Card
{
  private Suit suit;
  private CardValue cardValue;

  public Card (CardValue cardValue, Suit suit)
  {
    this.cardValue = cardValue;
    this.suit = suit;
  }

  public Suit getSuit()
  {
    return suit;
  }

  public void setSuit(Suit suit)
  {
    this.suit = suit;
  }

  public CardValue getCardValue()
  {
    return cardValue;
  }

  public void setCardValue(CardValue cardValue)
  {
    this.cardValue = cardValue;
  }
}

Okay nothing new going on in that code, it's a standard Object that defines some private (encapsulated) variables that are made publicly visible via getter and setter methods. But you can see how this makes sense right? A Card is simply made up of a CardValue and a Suit! Just like real life! Don't you just love Object Oriented Programming?

Okay, so let's talk a bit more about what I meant when I said that the Enums have to have a package or private level constructor. I said that this is because you shouldn't be able to instantiate the class, as the contained values should be referenced in a static fashion. Let's see what I mean with an example:

package com.howtoprogramwithjava.business;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.Iterator;

public class Deck
{
  private ArrayList deck;

  public Deck ()
  {
    this.deck = new ArrayList();
    for (int i=0; i<13; i++)
    {
      CardValue value = CardValue.values()[i];

      for (int j=0; j<4; j++)
      {
        Card card = new Card(value, Suit.values()[j]);
        this.deck.add(card);
      }
    }

    Collections.shuffle(deck);

    Iterator cardIterator = deck.iterator();
    while (cardIterator.hasNext())
    {
      Card aCard = cardIterator.next();
      System.out.println(aCard.getCardValue() + " of " + aCard.getSuit());
    }
  }
}

Wow! A lot going on here. The basic concept of this code is that we want to properly represent a Deck of Cards. So, we all know that there are 52 Cards in a Deck right? So this means that we should iterate through all of our CardValues and Suits in order to match them up with each other. We do this by referring to the Enums in a static way like so:

CardValue.values();
// and
Suit.values();

If you hover your mouse over the values() part of the code in your IDE, you'll see that when you invoke the values() method, you'll get an Array that represents every value inside the Enum. So if I were to invoke Suit.values(), I would get an array of values back like so:

[HEARTS, SPADES, CLUBS, DIAMONDS]

In that exact order. It's important to mention that it's in that exact order because that's the order in which they are defined in the Suit object. Java is very particular about the way it does things. It doesn't like to give you back an Array in any random order.

So, when you keep that in mind, it helps to understand what I'm doing in this Deck code. As you scan through the Deck code you'll notice that I have two for loops and one is nested inside the other. The outer for loop is running from 0 to 12 and the inner loop is running from 0 to 3. So, this means that we'll ensure that we get every single combination of CardValue and Suit.

Note: I said 0 to 12 even though the for loop says i=0; i<13; i++. I'll leave it to you to think things through and try to understand why this is. If you absolutely give up and can't figure it out (even after debugging the code), then I invite you to ask me in the comments section for the answer and I'll be happy to explain).

So, at this point we'll just have a Deck of Cards that are neatly in order. So, like any good Deck of cards, we want to mix them up so they're random right? Well, lucky for us, we used an ArrayList Collection to represent our Deck of Cards, and inside the Collection class, we have a helper method called shuffle. This method is used to randomize ANY List Collection. Neat :)

So, after we've shuffled our Deck let's just output what the Deck or Cards looks like!

THREE of SPADES
FIVE of SPADES
SIX of DIAMONDS
QUEEN of SPADES
FIVE of DIAMONDS
THREE of DIAMONDS
SEVEN of CLUBS
SIX of SPADES
QUEEN of HEARTS
KING of CLUBS
KING of SPADES
SEVEN of SPADES
KING of HEARTS
THREE of HEARTS
JACK of CLUBS
FOUR of DIAMONDS
TEN of DIAMONDS
TWO of CLUBS
EIGHT of SPADES
FOUR of CLUBS
EIGHT of CLUBS
TEN of SPADES
JACK of SPADES
THREE of CLUBS
NINE of CLUBS
SEVEN of HEARTS
NINE of DIAMONDS
ACE of CLUBS
SEVEN of DIAMONDS
FIVE of CLUBS
TWO of SPADES
TWO of HEARTS
KING of DIAMONDS
EIGHT of DIAMONDS
NINE of SPADES
QUEEN of DIAMONDS
EIGHT of HEARTS
JACK of DIAMONDS
TEN of HEARTS
JACK of HEARTS
TEN of CLUBS
ACE of SPADES
FIVE of HEARTS
ACE of DIAMONDS
TWO of DIAMONDS
FOUR of SPADES
SIX of CLUBS
SIX of HEARTS
FOUR of HEARTS
NINE of HEARTS
ACE of HEARTS
QUEEN of CLUBS

And there you go, a nice neat shuffled Deck. Don't you just love Object Oriented programming? You see how I was able to explain a real world scenario of a Deck of Cards by using the names of the actual types in Java? It makes your code so much more readable and understandable.

Okay folks, as always, it's been a pleasure writing up this Java tutorial for you on Enums today. So if you could do me a huge favour and share my content by clicking one (or all) of this social sharing buttons on the top left of your screen right now? Like/tweet/stumble away my friends and spread the word, every vote helps me out big time and it helps others to find my site and learn how to become a programmer (isn't that a gift you'd love to share?). hehe, okay, take care everyone and I look forward to seeing you all in the next tutorial!

 

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