How to attach a property to string?

Question

Can I do something like this in haxe:

trace ("Blue".description);
trace ("Green".description);
trace ("Red".description);

then, somewhere add a switch based on string value to return different description for each case?

I saw people using this for localization, like "Car".i18()

Any one can help?

Answer 1

Check out static extensions.

Basically it allows you to pretend static methods are member methods, but the first argument is the object you're operating on.

In your example

class ColorDescriptions {
    static public function description( color:String ) {
        return switch (color) {
            case "red": "passionate";
            case "blue": "calm";
            case "green": "environmentally friendly";
            default: "unknown colour";
        };
    }
}

And then:

using ColorDescriptions; // Use static methods from `ColourDescriptions` as mixins
...
trace( "red".description() ); // "passionate"

This only works with methods/functions, not properties. So "red".description() is possible, but "red".description is not.