Enumerations

Remarks#

Approach with sealed trait and case objects is preferred because Scala enumeration has a few problems:

Enumerations have the same type after erasure.
Compiler doesn’t complain about “Match is not exhaustive”, if case is missed it will fail in runtime scala.MatchError:

def isWeekendWithBug(day: WeekDays.Value): Boolean = day match { case WeekDays.Sun | WeekDays.Sat => true }

isWeekendWithBug(WeekDays.Fri) scala.MatchError: Fri (of class scala.Enumeration$Val)

Compare with:

def isWeekendWithBug(day: WeekDay): Boolean = day match {
  case WeekDay.Sun | WeekDay.Sat => true
}

Warning: match may not be exhaustive.
It would fail on the following inputs: Fri, Mon, Thu, Tue, Wed
def isWeekendWithBug(day: WeekDay): Boolean = day match {
                                          ^

More detailed explanation is presented in this article about Scala Enumeration.

Days of the week using Scala Enumeration

Java-like enumerations can be created by extending Enumeration.

object WeekDays extends Enumeration {
  val Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun = Value
}

def isWeekend(day: WeekDays.Value): Boolean = day match {
  case WeekDays.Sat | WeekDays.Sun => true
  case _ => false
}

isWeekend(WeekDays.Sun)
res0: Boolean = true

It is also possible to add a human-readable name for values in an enumeration:

object WeekDays extends Enumeration {
      val Mon = Value("Monday")
      val Tue = Value("Tuesday")
      val Wed = Value("Wednesday")
      val Thu = Value("Thursday")
      val Fri = Value("Friday")
      val Sat = Value("Saturday")
      val Sun = Value("Sunday")
}

println(WeekDays.Mon)
>> Monday

WeekDays.withName("Monday") == WeekDays.Mon
>> res0: Boolean = true

Beware of the not-so-typesafe behavior, wherein different enumerations can evaluate as the same instance type:

object Parity extends Enumeration {
   val Even, Odd = Value
}
  
WeekDays.Mon.isInstanceOf[Parity.Value]
>> res1: Boolean = true

Using sealed trait and case objects

An alternative to extending Enumeration is using sealed case objects:

sealed trait WeekDay

object WeekDay {
  case object Mon extends WeekDay
  case object Tue extends WeekDay
  case object Wed extends WeekDay
  case object Thu extends WeekDay
  case object Fri extends WeekDay
  case object Sun extends WeekDay
  case object Sat extends WeekDay
}

The sealed keyword guarantees that the trait WeekDay cannot be extended in another file. This allows the compiler to make certain assumptions, including that all possible values of WeekDay are already enumerated.

One drawback is that this method does not allow you to obtain a list of all possible values. To get such a list it must be provided explicitly:

val allWeekDays = Seq(Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sun, Sat)

Case classes can also extend a sealed trait. Thus, objects and case classes can be mixed to create complex hierarchies:

sealed trait CelestialBody
    
object CelestialBody {
  case object Earth extends CelestialBody
  case object Sun extends CelestialBody
  case object Moon extends CelestialBody
  case class Asteroid(name: String) extends CelestialBody
}

Another drawback is that there is no way to access a the variable name of a sealed object’s enumeration, or search by it. If you need some kind of name associated to each value, it must be manually defined:

  sealed trait WeekDay { val name: String }

  object WeekDay {
      case object Mon extends WeekDay { val name = "Monday" }
      case object Tue extends WeekDay { val name = "Tuesday" }
      (...)   
  }

Or just:

  sealed case class WeekDay(name: String)
    
  object WeekDay {
      object Mon extends WeekDay("Monday")
      object Tue extends WeekDay("Tuesday")
      (...)   
  }

Using sealed trait and case objects and allValues-macro

This is just an extension on the sealed trait variant where a macro generates a set with all instances at compile time. This nicely omits the drawback that a developer can add a value to the enumeration but forget to add it to the allElements set.

This variant especially becomes handy for large enums.

import EnumerationMacros._

sealed trait WeekDay
object WeekDay {
  case object Mon extends WeekDay
  case object Tue extends WeekDay
  case object Wed extends WeekDay
  case object Thu extends WeekDay
  case object Fri extends WeekDay
  case object Sun extends WeekDay
  case object Sat extends WeekDay
  val allWeekDays: Set[WeekDay] = sealedInstancesOf[WeekDay]
}

For this to work you need this macro:

import scala.collection.immutable.TreeSet
import scala.language.experimental.macros
import scala.reflect.macros.blackbox

/**
A macro to produce a TreeSet of all instances of a sealed trait.
Based on Travis Brown's work:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13671734/iteration-over-a-sealed-trait-in-scala
CAREFUL: !!! MUST be used at END OF code block containing the instances !!!
*/
object EnumerationMacros {
  def sealedInstancesOf[A]: TreeSet[A] = macro sealedInstancesOf_impl[A]

  def sealedInstancesOf_impl[A: c.WeakTypeTag](c: blackbox.Context) = {
    import c.universe._

    val symbol = weakTypeOf[A].typeSymbol.asClass

    if  (!symbol.isClass || !symbol.isSealed)
      c.abort(c.enclosingPosition, "Can only enumerate values of a sealed trait or class.")
    else {

      val children = symbol.knownDirectSubclasses.toList

      if (!children.forall(_.isModuleClass)) c.abort(c.enclosingPosition, "All children must be objects.")
      else c.Expr[TreeSet[A]] {

        def sourceModuleRef(sym: Symbol) = Ident(sym.asInstanceOf[scala.reflect.internal.Symbols#Symbol
          ].sourceModule.asInstanceOf[Symbol]
        )

        Apply(
          Select(
            reify(TreeSet).tree,
            TermName("apply")
          ),
          children.map(sourceModuleRef(_))
        )
      }
    }
  }
}