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

My solution was

public enum MyEnum {

    FOO,
    BAR;

    // element value must be a constant expression
    // so we needs this hack in order to use enums as
    // annotation values
    public static final String _FOO = FOO.name();
    public static final String _BAR = BAR.name();
}

I thought this was the cleanest way. This meets couple of requirements:

• If you want the enums to be numeric
• If you want the enums to be of some other type
• Compiler notifies you if a refactor references a different value
• Cleanest use-case (minus one character): @Annotation(foo = MyEnum._FOO)

EDIT

This leads occasionally to compilation error, which leads to the reason of the original element value must be a constant expression

So this is apparently not an option!