Just Java

I love Enums. There are a lot of use cases, where they become really handy. Especially since I have learned that you can override methods in enums…

Some days ago Alexander Radzin came up with another nice idea: He created a hierarchical structure using enums. The idea is very simple: Just add a reference to the parent to your enum.

While the idea is really nice, the implementation seems to be a little bit too complicated. I think using reflection is not a very nice thing at all. Therefore I have modified his implementation.

And this is the idea. That idea has a lot of potential – I am sure I will find a lot of nice use cases…

public enum OsType {
OS(null),
Windows(OS),
WindowsNT(Windows),
WindowsNTWorkstation(WindowsNT),
WindowsNTServer(WindowsNT),
Windows2000(Windows),
Windows2000Server(Windows2000),
Windows2000Workstation(Windows2000),
WindowsXp(Windows),
WindowsVista(Windows),
Windows7(Windows),
Windows95(Windows),
Windows98(Windows),
Unix(OS) {
@Override
public boolean supportsXWindowSystem() {
return true;
}
},
Linux(Unix),
AIX(Unix),
HpUx(Unix),
SunOs(Unix),
;

private final OsType parent;
private final List children = new ArrayList();
private final List allChildren = new ArrayList();

OsType( OsType parent ) {
this.parent = parent;
if ( parent != null ) {
parent.addChild( this );
}
}

public OsType parent() {
return parent;
}

public boolean is( OsType other ) {
if ( other == null ) {
return false;
}

for ( OsType osType = this; osType != null; osType = osType.parent() ) {
if ( other == osType ) {
return true;
}
}
return false;
}

public List children() {
return Collections.unmodifiableList( children );
}

public List allChildren() {
return Collections.unmodifiableList( allChildren );
}

private void addChild( OsType child ) {
this.children.add( child );

List greatChildren = new ArrayList();
greatChildren.add( child );
greatChildren.addAll( child.allChildren() );

OsType currentAncestor = this;
while ( currentAncestor != null ) {
currentAncestor.allChildren.addAll( greatChildren );
currentAncestor = currentAncestor.parent;
}
}

public boolean supportsXWindowSystem() {
if ( parent == null ) {
return false;
}

return parent.supportsXWindowSystem();
}
}