Java Program to Lookup enum by String value

To understand this example, you should have the knowledge of the following Java programming topics:


Example: Lookup enum by string value

public class EnumString {

    public enum TextStyle {
        BOLD, ITALICS, UNDERLINE, STRIKETHROUGH
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        String style = "Bold";

        TextStyle textStyle = TextStyle.valueOf(style.toUpperCase());

        System.out.println(textStyle);
    }
}

Output

BOLD

In the above program, we have an enum TextStyle which represents the different styles a block of text can have, i.e. Bold, Italics, Underline, Strikethrough.

We also have a string named style which holds the current style we want. However, it is not in all-caps.

We then use the enum TextStyle's valueOf() method to pass the style and get the enum value we require.

Since valueOf() takes a case-sensitive string value, we had to use the toUpperCase() method to convert the given string to upper case.

If, instead, we'd used:

TextStyle.valueOf(style)

the program would've thrown an exception No enum constant EnumString.TextStyle.Bold.