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Few days ago I was thinking about optimizing the use of constants (usually of String type) inside projects to avoid proliferation of public static final String declarations on various classes (with a limited control over duplicates) but giving at the same time developers a way to increase readability of constants in their code.

The reason for this post is that I want to know your opinion on this strategy, that on my eyes appear elegant and clear but may bring some drawbacks.

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public class Constants{
    private static ObjectName_Constants objectNameConstants;
 
    public static ObjectName_Constants ObjectName{ 
        get {
            if(objectNameConstants == null){
                objectNameConstants = new ObjectName_Constants();
            }
            return objectNameConstants;
        }
    }
 
    public class ObjectName_Constants{
        public String CustomField_AValue  { get { return 'aValue'; } }
        public String RecordType_ADevName  { get { return 'aDevName'; } }
    }
}

The class is basically shaped as follows:

This brings to a cool looking:

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String myDevName = Constants.ObjectName.RecordType_ADevName;

This way we have the following pros:

  • Clear hirearchy for constants
  • More readable constants names (they are all getters but are used as constants, so no need for upper case)
  • Heap space is allocated on constants only if they are actually used
  • Centralized place for common constants

And these are the cons:

  • More quantity of Apex used to write a constants

I’m curious to get some feedbacks.