Case-insensitive matching of a string to a Java enum

by

I found getting the special blend of generics a little tricky, but this works.

public static <T extends Enum<?>> T searchEnum(Class<T> enumeration,
        String search) {
    for (T each : enumeration.getEnumConstants()) {
        if (each.name().compareToIgnoreCase(search) == 0) {
            return each;
        }
    }
    return null;
}

Example

public enum Horse {
    THREE_LEG_JOE, GLUE_FACTORY
};

public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println(searchEnum(Horse.class, "Three_Leg_Joe"));
    System.out.println(searchEnum(Day.class, "ThUrSdAy"));
}

Leave a Comment