Help with constants

Question

Suppose I define a class to contain a set of constants whose values ar stored in a database. Is there a way for the class to create constants based upon values retrieved from a database?
In other words suppose I have a database table that stores information about shapes like this:
SHAPES_TABLE {
SHAPE_ID INT
SHAPE_DESC VARCHAR
Now the table is populated with these records
1 Square
2 Circle
3 Triangle
I would need to define three constants in my class like this
public static final int SQUARE = 1;
public static final int CIRCLE = 2;
public static final int TRIANGLE = 3;
Is there a way to do this dynamically when the class is loaded so that my constants class can reflect new values added to the database table without my having to go back and add new code?

Answer 1

Is there a way to do this dynamically when the class
is loaded so that my constants class can reflect new
values added to the database table without my having
to go back and add new code?It's technically possible. You could use a bytecode manipulation library like BCEL or CGLIB to create new constants in the class. However, since this is done at runtime, no other class would be able to refer to those constants.
What are you really trying to do? There's probably a better approach.