5a. Android Studio: create new Java CONSTANTS class

Sometimes is worth to extract a bunch of code to a separate class to keep the original short and sweet (readable and maintainable).




In our Activity class I had a lot of constants:

   private final static double CONVERSION_METERS_TO_YARDS = 1.093613298;
   private final static double CONVERSION_KILOMETERS_TO_MILES = 0.621371192;

One way to maintain them was to move them to a new Java class ConversionConstants

• Make sure you write the JavaDoc /** my description */ for each class you create
• constants are public - available form any other class
• constants are final - the value cannot be changed by the code
• constants are static - indicate that the constant will belong to class and not the instance, you don't have to have an instance to get it e.g. ConversionConstants.METERS_TO_YARDS

package com.chicagoandroid.cit299.calc;
/**
* This class will contain hundreds of possible conversion constants.
*/
public class ConversionConstants {
    public final static double METERS_TO_YARDS = 1.093613298;
    public final static double KILOMETERS_TO_MILES = 0.621371192;
}

Now I can access these constants from any other class and use them in my calculations:

Note: I am not providing the source code on purpose because copy-and-paste is not a good learning experience.