CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javareflection
bawse
bawse

Reputation: 201

retrieve field of type class

I have a class that is going to be passed into a function and it will be defined as follows:

class ayy{

String blah;
Class a;
Class b;

}

I want to be able to invoke the getSimpleName() method on the classes a and b. Currently I am doing it as follows:

Class c = (Class)argument; // Where argument is the "ayy" class
c.getField("a").getSimpleName();

But this gives me an error saying "getSimpleName()" is not defined for type field.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 249

Answers (1)

rgettman
rgettman

Reputation: 178243

You cannot call a method directly on an object that results from reflection, such as you're doing with Field, as if it were a reference variable of the desired type.

Instead, you'll need to call getDeclaredField, because getField only gets public fields. Also, you'll need to get() the value of the Field, passing in an instance of the ayy class, which will return the value of the Field. Then you'll need to cast it to a Class, because get() returns an Object. Then you can call getSimpleName().

Class<?> classOfA = (Class<?>) c.getDeclaredField("a").get(anAyy);
String simpleName = classOfA.getSimpleName();

You'll also need to catch the various reflection-related exceptions that may be thrown.

Upvotes: 2

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