Converting enum into a class hierarchy

Question

Let's say I am writing a class in Cocoa to act as a proxy to a server. To represent the current state of the connection, consider the enumeration:

enum
{
    MyConnectionStatusDisconnected = 0,
    MyConnectionStatusConnecting,
    MyConnectionStatusConnected,
    MyConnectionStatusCount
};
typedef NSUInteger MyConnectionStatus;

I may have it live in my proxy class like so:

@interface ServerProxy : NSObject
{
    MyConnectionStatus connectionStatus;
}

That's fine, but what if I want to figure out a user-readable interpretation of the connection status? I might have a static function like this:

+(NSString*)statusStringForInt:(MyConnectionStatus)status;

At this point I'm quickly leaving the realm of object-oriented programming.

What would be the best way to refactor this enum into a class hierarchy?

Answer 1

Please see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1242914/converting-between-c-enum-and-xml. It's the same answer.

Answer 2

I wouldn't refactor it into a class hierarchy. Instead, use NSString constants:

// foo.h
extern NSString *MyConnectionStatusDisconnected;


// foo.m
MyConnectionStatusDisconnected = @"Connection Status: Disconnected";

isEqualToString: does pointer equality as the first test so this will be fast.

You can then use Connection Status: Disconnected in your strings file(s) if you need to localize.