How to supply Enum value to an annotation from a Constant in Java

Question

I\'m unable to use an Enum taken from a Constant as a parameter in an annotation. I get this compilation error: \"The value for annotation attribute [attribute] must be an e

Answer 1

I think that the most voted answer is incomplete, since it does not guarantee at all that the enum value is coupled with the underlying constant String value. With that solution, one should just decouple the two classes.

Instead, I rather suggest to strengthen the coupling shown in that answer by enforcing the correlation between the enum name and the constant value as follows:

public enum Gender {
    MALE(Constants.MALE_VALUE), FEMALE(Constants.FEMALE_VALUE);

    Gender(String genderString) {
      if(!genderString.equals(this.name()))
        throw new IllegalArgumentException();
    }

    public static class Constants {
        public static final String MALE_VALUE = "MALE";
        public static final String FEMALE_VALUE = "FEMALE";
    }
}

As pointed out by @GhostCat in a comment, proper unit tests must be put in place to ensure the coupling.