How to get an enum value from a string value in Java?

Question

Say I have an enum which is just

public enum Blah {
    A, B, C, D
}

and I would like to find the enum value of a string, for example

Answer 1

Adding on to the top rated answer, with a helpful utility...

valueOf() throws two different Exceptions in cases where it doesn't like its input.

• IllegalArgumentException
• NullPointerExeption

If your requirements are such that you don't have any guarantee that your String will definitely match an enum value, for example if the String data comes from a database and could contain old version of the enum, then you'll need to handle these often...

So here's a reusable method I wrote which allows us to define a default Enum to be returned if the String we pass doesn't match.

private static > T valueOf( String name , T defaultVal) {
        try {
            return Enum.valueOf(defaultVal.getDeclaringClass() , name);
        } catch (IllegalArgumentException | NullPointerException e) {
            return defaultVal;
        }
    }

Use it like this:

public enum MYTHINGS {
    THINGONE,
    THINGTWO
}

public static void main(String [] asd) {
  valueOf("THINGTWO" , MYTHINGS.THINGONE);//returns MYTHINGS.THINGTWO
  valueOf("THINGZERO" , MYTHINGS.THINGONE);//returns MYTHINGS.THINGONE
}