I have the following route on a Spring Boot application:

@SuppressWarnings("unused")
@GetMapping("/status")
public Object status() {
    String statusMessage = "disconnected";
    String error = null;

    try {
        Db db = new Db();
        if (db.isConnected()) {
            statusMessage = "ok";
        }
    } catch (Exception e) {
        error = e.getMessage();
    }

    return new Object() {
        public String project = applicationName;
        public String version = buildVersion;
        public String connection = statusMessage;
        public String message = error;
    };
}

However the lines public String connection = statusMessage; and public String message = error; have the following error:

Local variable statusMessage defined in an enclosing scope must be final or effectively final

How can I fix this besides creating a new final variable that receives whatever error or statusMessage has before using it in the new Object?

Note: The reason why I am returning a new Object is because its the simplest way I could find to return a POJO for spring to turn it into JSON without having to create a class for every route return.