How to print enum names instead of int value of a protocol buffer (Java)

(Answer is for proto3)

Use Carl's enum example:

enum Foo {
  BAR = 1;
  BAZ = 5;
  QUX = 1234;
}

Suppose you have variable: Foo foo = Foo.BAR, to get the name of foo:

String fooName = foo.getValueDescriptor().getName(); //fooName="BAR"  

Also see:

https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/reference/java-generated#enum

https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/reference/java/com/google/protobuf/Descriptors.EnumDescriptor#getName()

For the following protobuf enum:

enum Foo {
  BAR = 1;
  BAZ = 5;
  QUX = 1234;
}

The docs say that:

An integer constant is also generated with the suffix _VALUE for each enum value.

It sounds like you are using the the constant "e.g. BAR_VALUE, BAZ_VALUE, or QUX_VALUE". Is this the case?

See: https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/reference/java-generated#enum

You could get a list of the enum values using .values() in java.

Assuming you had a protobuf enum

enum Foo {
    BAR = 1;
    BAZ = 2;
}

If you referenced Foo from Java, you could get an array of Foo's values with Foo.values() - or if you were using a generic enum for the call, genericEnum.getDeclaringClass().getEnumConstants().

This would give you [BAR, BAZ].