Obtaining an Array class with Java reflection
Obtaining an Array class with Java reflection
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This morning I needed to find and invoke a method reflectively that had an array parameter. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to get the class representing say a char[].
As a reminder, some other ways to get Class instances are:
- Class.forName("my.SillyClass") - for obtaining the Class for my.SillyClass by name
- SillyClass.class - for obtaining the class by type (preferred to the above for type safety)
- Integer.TYPE - for obtaining the Class for any primitive type via their wrapper class
An array is an object and has a class, but I wasn't aware of any way to do the equivalent of the above for an array of some type. One way is to use Class.forName() with the array class signature:
- Class.forName("[C") - for a char[]
- Class.forName("[Ljava.lang.String;") - for a String[]
But then my Java guru Tim Eck pointed out that you can just do:
- char[].class - for a char[]
Hope that helps someone out there!
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