How do I create a generic method to return an array of the enum values instead of its constants?

Question

I have an enum with descriptions as String. This is the enum.

public enum tabs
{
    A("Actual data"),
    B("Bad data"),
    C("Can data"),
    D("Direct data");

    private String description;
    tabs(String desc)
    {
        this.description = desc;
    }


    public String getDescription()
    {
        return this.description;
    }
}

Now, if I need the data for A, I'd just do

tabs.A.description

I am in the process of creating a generic method to return the values.

I have managed to utilize the below generic method to accept an enum type as the argument. It returns an array of the enum constants. But I actually want it to return an array of the values.. ie {"Actual data", "Bad data", "Can data", "Direct data"}.

public static String[] getActualTabs(Class<? extends Enum<?>> e) 
{
    return Arrays.stream(e.getEnumConstants()).map(Enum::name).toArray(String[]::new);
}

What options do I have to achieve this?

Answer 1

You can pass a mapper Function to map enum constants into Strings:

public static <T extends Enum<T>> String[] getActualTabs(Class<T> e, Function<? super T, String> mapper) 
{
    return Arrays.stream(e.getEnumConstants()).map(mapper).toArray(String[]::new);
}

Usage:

System.out.println(Arrays.toString(getActualTabs(tabs.class,tabs::getDescription)));

Output:

[Actual data, Bad data, Can data, Direct data]