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

I like to use this sort of process to parse commands as strings into enumerations. I normally have one of the enumerations as "unknown" so it helps to have that returned when the others are not found (even on a case insensitive basis) rather than null (that meaning there is no value). Hence I use this approach.

static > Enum getEnumValue(String what, Class enumClass) {
    Enum unknown=null;
    for (Enum enumVal: enumClass.getEnumConstants()) {  
        if (what.compareToIgnoreCase(enumVal.name()) == 0) {
            return enumVal;
        }
        if (enumVal.name().compareToIgnoreCase("unknown") == 0) {
            unknown=enumVal;
        }
    }  
    return unknown;
}