Case objects vs Enumerations in Scala

Question

Are there any best-practice guidelines on when to use case classes (or case objects) vs extending Enumeration in Scala?

They seem to offer some of the same benefits.

Answer 1

Case objects already return their name for their toString methods, so passing it in separately is unnecessary. Here is a version similar to jho's (convenience methods omitted for brevity):

trait Enum[A] {
  trait Value { self: A => }
  val values: List[A]
}

sealed trait Currency extends Currency.Value
object Currency extends Enum[Currency] {
  case object EUR extends Currency
  case object GBP extends Currency
  val values = List(EUR, GBP)
}

Objects are lazy; by using vals instead we can drop the list but have to repeat the name:

trait Enum[A <: {def name: String}] {
  trait Value { self: A =>
    _values :+= this
  }
  private var _values = List.empty[A]
  def values = _values
}

sealed abstract class Currency(val name: String) extends Currency.Value
object Currency extends Enum[Currency] {
  val EUR = new Currency("EUR") {}
  val GBP = new Currency("GBP") {}
}

If you don't mind some cheating, you can pre-load your enumeration values using the reflection API or something like Google Reflections. Non-lazy case objects give you the cleanest syntax:

trait Enum[A] {
  trait Value { self: A =>
    _values :+= this
  }
  private var _values = List.empty[A]
  def values = _values
}

sealed trait Currency extends Currency.Value
object Currency extends Enum[Currency] {
  case object EUR extends Currency
  case object GBP extends Currency
}

Nice and clean, with all the advantages of case classes and Java enumerations. Personally, I define the enumeration values outside of the object to better match idiomatic Scala code:

object Currency extends Enum[Currency]
sealed trait Currency extends Currency.Value
case object EUR extends Currency
case object GBP extends Currency