Getting a enum constant declared in imported class, via reflection

Question

Having something like:

import com.example.test.classA;
import com.example.test.classB;
import com.example.test.classC;

public class MyClass {
    ...
    Flavors p = Flavors.VANILLA;
    ...
    String flavorChoice = "Flavors.CHOCOLATE";
    ...
}

where Flavors is an enum declared in one of the imported classes:

public enum Flavors { CHOCOLATE, VANILLA, LEMON };

How can I get a value, using reflection, from the string flavorChoice?
Do not assume I know in which imported class Flavors is declared.
Do not even assume that Flavors is accessible from within MyClass.

CLARIFICATIONS
The string flavorChoices should produce an Object, the object may be, in the example above it is, of type Flavors. But it also may refer to other constants in other enums:

String flavorChoice = "ExtraFlavors.MENTA";
String flavorChoice = "ExoticFlavors.CHALK";
String flavorChoice = "AnyEmun.ANYCONSTANT";

I don't know what the string contents are until runtime. I want to be able to:

1. Check the referred enum indeeed exists and is accessible from MyClass
2. Get the referred enum constant and put it in an Object

Answer 1

If string is re-defined as following:

String flavorChoice = "CHOCOLATE";

you even do not need reflection. Just use Flavors.valueOf(flavorChoice).

In your case you can say:

String choice = "Flavors.CHOCOLATE";
String[] fragments = choice.split("\\."); 
Enum.valueOf(Class.forName(fragments[0]), fragments[1]);

Class.forName(fragments[0]) will return you your enum's class, Enum.valueOf() returns the element of the enum.

EDIT: If in real-world case your classes belong to package you should improve the parsing by replacing split() to something else.

Answer 2

If you have access to the Flavors class, as suggested by the example, the valueOf method may be useful:

Returns the enum constant of this type with the specified name. The string must match exactly an identifier used to declare an enum constant in this type. (Extraneous whitespace characters are not permitted.)

Thus:

Flavor f = Flavors.valueOf("VANILLA");

If your question is how to extract VANILLA from Flavors.VANILLA, you could try:

Flavor f = Flavors.valueOf("Flavors.VANILLA".replaceAll("^.*\\.", ""));

where * is a greedy quantifier.

The advantage of using regex over split("\\.")[1] is that if the parameter came in with a greater qualification, like classA.Flavors.VANILLA or com.example.test.classA.Flavors.VANILLA, the regex would still work. Alternatively, you could use:

String[] parts = "Flavors.VANILLA".split("\\.");
String flavorPart = parts[parts.length - 1];