What is the best way to implement constants in Java? [closed]

Answer 1

Based on the comments above I think this is a good approach to change the old-fashioned global constant class (having public static final variables) to its enum-like equivalent in a way like this:

public class Constants {

    private Constants() {
        throw new AssertionError();
    }

    public interface ConstantType {}

    public enum StringConstant implements ConstantType {
        DB_HOST("localhost");
        // other String constants come here

        private String value;
        private StringConstant(String value) {
            this.value = value;
        }
        public String value() {
            return value;
        }
    }

    public enum IntConstant implements ConstantType {
        DB_PORT(3128), 
        MAX_PAGE_SIZE(100);
        // other int constants come here

        private int value;
        private IntConstant(int value) {
            this.value = value;
        }
        public int value() {
            return value;
        }
    }

    public enum SimpleConstant implements ConstantType {
        STATE_INIT,
        STATE_START,
        STATE_END;
    }

}

So then I can refer them to like:

Constants.StringConstant.DB_HOST