Best practices for using and persisting enums

I've seen several questions/discussions here about the best way to handle and persist enum-like values (e.g. Persisting data suited for enums , How to persist an enum using NHibernate ), and I'd like to ask what the general consenus is.

In particular:

• How should these values be handled in the code?
• How should they be persisted to a database (as text/as a number)?
• What are the tradeoffs of different solutions?

Note: I moved the explanations originally included in this question to an answer.

I agree with much of what you say. One thing I'd like to append, though, about the persistence of enums: I don't believe the generation of the enums at build time from the DB values is acceptable, but I also think that the runtime check is not a good solution. I'd define a third means: have a unit test which will check the values of the enum against the database. This prevents "casual" divergence, and avoids the overhead of checking the enums against the database every time the code is run.

The initial article looks fine to me. Still, based on the comments, it seems some comments concerning Java enums might clarify few things.

Enum type in Java is a class by definition, but many programmers tend to forget this, because they rather relate it to "a list of allowed values" as in some other languages. It's more than that.

So, to avoid those switch statements it might be reasonable to put some code and additional methods in the enum class. There's almost never a need to create a separate "enum-like real class".

Consider also the point of documentation - do you want to document the actual meaning of your enum in the database? In the source code reflecting the values (your enum type) or in some external documentation? I personally prefer the source code.

If you want to present enum values as integers in the database due to speed or whatever reason, that mapping should also reside in the Java enum. You'll get string-name mapping by default, and I've been content with that. There's an ordinal number associated with each enum value, but using that directly as a mapping between code and database is not very bright, because that ordinal number will change if someone reorders the values in the source code. Or adds additional enum values in between existing values. Or removes some value.

(Of course, if someone changes the name of the enum in the source code, the default string-mapping goes sour too, but that's less likely to happen accidentally. And you can more easily protect against that if necessary by putting some runtime-checking and check constraints in the database as suggested here already. )

I've tried to summarize my understanding. Feel free to edit this if you have any corrections. So here it goes:

In the code

In the code, enums should be handled using either the language's native enum type (at least in Java and C#), or using something like the "typesafe enum pattern". Using plain constants (Integer or similar) is discouraged, as you lose type safety (and make it hard to understand which values are legal input for e.g. a method).

The choice between these two depends on how much additional functionality is to be attached to the enum:

• If you want to put loads of functionality into the enum (which is good, because you avoid switch()ing on it all the time), a class is usually more appropriate.
• On the other hand, for simple enum-like values, the language's enum is usually clearer.

In particular, at least in Java an enum cannot inherit from another class, so if you have several enums with similar behavior which you'd like to put into a superclass, you cannot use Java's enums.

Persisting enums

To persist enums, each enum value should be assigned a unique ID. This can be either an integer, or a short string. A short string is preferred, since it can be mnemonic (makes it easier for DBAs etc. to understand the raw data in the db).

• In the software, every enum should then have mapping functions to convert between the enum (for use inside the software) and the ID value (for persisting). Some frameworks (e.g. (N)Hibernate) have limited suppport for doing this automatically. Otherwise, you have to put it into the enum type/class.
• The database should (ideally) contain a table for each enum listing the legal values. One column would be the ID(see above), which is the PK. Additional columns might make sense for e.g. a description. All table columns that will contain values from that enum can then use this "enum table" as a FK. This guarantees that incorrect enum values can never be persisted, and allows the DB to "stand on its own".

One problem with this approach is that the list of legal enum values exists in two places (code and database). This is hard to avoid and therefore often considered acceptable, but there are two alternatives:

• Only keep the list of values in the DB, generate the enum type at build time. Elegant, but means that a DB connection is required for a build to run, which seems problematic.
• Define the list of values in the code to be authoritative. Check against the values in the DB at runtime (usually at startup), complain/abort on mismatch.

In the code handling for C# you've missed out defining delcaring the 0 value. I almost without fail always declare my first value as:

public enum SomeEnum
{
    None = 0,
}

So as to serve as a null value. Because the backing type is an integer and an integer defaults to 0 so it is massively useful in a lot of places to know if an enum has actually been programatically set or not.