Is there a way to do something idiotmatic in this case? I have a string value that can be an enum, ...

# codereview

[Colton Idle]

Is there a way to do something idiotmatic in this case?

I have a string value that can be an enum, and I basically want an exhaustive when on the enum == my string.

In my head, something like this should work

val buttonText = when (MyEnum.values() == myString) {
ONE -> "first case"
TWO -> "second case"
else -> "Your string does not match any of the enums"
}

[Colton Idle]

Ooh. I think I got it.

val buttonText = when (MyEnum.valueOf(myString)) {
ONE -> "first case"
TWO -> "second case"
else -> "Your string does not match any of the enums"
}

[ephemient]

note, valueOf throws IAE on invalid input

[Colton Idle]

OOoh. Good catch. Any way around that?

[Colton Idle]

like. valueOfOrNull or something? (i can just google it, just talking out loud here)

[ephemient]

there is no valueOfOrNull currently. it would be useful though https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-42619

[ephemient]

it might be added via https://github.com/Kotlin/KEEP/blob/master/proposals/enum-entries.md after Kotlin 1.9 or thereabouts

[Colton Idle]

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35666815/enum-valueof-in-kotlin

[Colton Idle]

inline fun <reified T : kotlin.Enum<T>> safeValueOf(type: String?): T? {
    return java.lang.Enum.valueOf(T::class.java, type)
}

looks like i can add that

[ephemient]

you have to wrap that in try-catch, the Java method also throws IAE

[ephemient]

in which case you might as well

try {
    MyEnum.valueOf(string)
} catch (_: IllegalArgumentException) {
    null
}

[Colton Idle]

interesting...

[Colton Idle]

hm

[Colton Idle]

yeah. just gonna wrap it in a try/catch and set it to a variable on one line, then on another line I'll have my actual when statement with the else