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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.

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:

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.