Best way to define error codes/strings in Java?

Question

I am writing a web service in Java, and I am trying to figure out the best way to define error codes and their associated error strings. I need to have a nu

Answer 1

At my last job I went a little deeper in the enum version:

public enum Messages {
    @Error
    @Text("You can''t put a {0} in a {1}")
    XYZ00001_CONTAINMENT_NOT_ALLOWED,
    ...
}

@Error, @Info, @Warning are retained in the class file and are available at runtime. (We had a couple of other annotations to help describe message delivery as well)

@Text is a compile-time annotation.

I wrote an annotation processor for this that did the following:

• Verify that there are no duplicate message numbers (the part before the first underscore)
• Syntax-check the message text
• Generate a messages.properties file that contains the text, keyed by the enum value.

I wrote a few utility routines that helped log errors, wrap them as exceptions (if desired) and so forth.

I'm trying to get them to let me open-source it... -- Scott