using enums or static string variable in java

This answer is probably overkill. Maybe there's a badge for that. Anyway, it could be useful in a situation in which you have a lot of enumeration values and have to deal with a Strings as being the means by which another system sends information to you. That is exactly what I have (something north of 50), so I used this construct so that I could generate a mapping just once of the Strings reported by the db and the enums I used internally, and then not think about it after -- toString and fromString do all the work:

package com.stevej;

import com.google.common.collect.HashBiMap;

public enum TestEnum {
  ALPHA("Alpha"), BETA("Beta"), GAMMA("Gamma");

  private static HashBiMap<TestEnum, String> stringMapping = HashBiMap
      .create(TestEnum.values().length);

  private String stringValue = null;

  TestEnum(String stringValue) {
    this.stringValue = stringValue;
  }

  String getStringValue() {
    return this.stringValue;
  }

  @Override
  public String toString() {
    return stringMapping.get(this);
  }

  public static TestEnum fromString(String string) {
    return stringMapping.inverse().get(string);
  }

  static {
    for (TestEnum e : TestEnum.values()) {
      stringMapping.put(e, e.getStringValue());
    }
  }
}

Here's a quick test to show the data switching back and forth:

package com.stevej;

public class StackOverflowMain {

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println(">> " + TestEnum.ALPHA);
    System.out.println(">> " + TestEnum.BETA);
    System.out.println(">> " + TestEnum.GAMMA);

    TestEnum a = TestEnum.fromString("Alpha");
    TestEnum b = TestEnum.fromString("Beta");
    TestEnum c = TestEnum.fromString("Gamma");

    System.out.println(">> " + a);
    System.out.println(">> " + b);
    System.out.println(">> " + c);
  }

}

The output shows the use of the mixed case values instead of the uppercase, showing my strings are being used:

>> Alpha
>> Beta
>> Gamma
>> Alpha
>> Beta
>> Gamma

Note that I am using the Google Guava library so I can take advantage of the BiMap.

you can try a simple substitution for turn the string into an enum

switch(MyEnum.valueOf(text.replace(' ', '_')) {
    case load_strings:

You can use toUpperCase() if you want it in upper case.

You should do what you think is the simplest and clearest.

Generally you should use Enums to store a set of values that are related in some way. They all should have a similar "is a" relationship. It should not be used to simply store a set of constant strings that are not related.

Of course, if you have a switch statement over a set of string values then that suggests that those string values are related and should be grouped as an Enum and use enum's mechanism to use a switch.

The enum type's valueOf method will allow you to convert from a String to the enum type if the passed string is equal to the name value. If this is not the case, you could implement your own valueOf that uses a stored string field rather than the name. You could store the fields in a private static Map for the conversion.

Because enum is typed.

Static String is not typed.

public enum Something{
  CAT("cat");

  private String animal;

  private Something(String animal){
    this.animal = animal;
  }

  public String getAnimal(){
    return this.animal;
  }
}