CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaclassinheritanceinstanceof
santana011
santana011

Reputation: 119

How to return object class without creating new one?

I have hierarchy of few classes: Organism -> Fox,Antelope,Wolf

And i want to create a method that will define what is the class of the given object, without returning new instance of this object.

Something like this:

public Organism defineOrganismClass(Organism o) {
        if (o instanceof Antelope) {
            return ...;
        }if (o instanceof Fox) {
            return ...;
        }            //and so on
}

Is there a way to do it?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 598

Answers (1)

Maarten Bodewes
Maarten Bodewes

Reputation: 93968

Yes, you can return Class<? extends Organism> instead, e.g. Fox.class. This will give you the class definition, but no instance. You would not need the if statements, just return o.getClass().

It does of course beg the question what you then want to do with that class. Maybe you want to define an enum instead, e.g. enum OrganismType { ANTELOPE, FOX } which is easier to operate on.

Upvotes: 1

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