7.6. Reflecting Generic Types The reflection library provides a Type interface to describe a generic type. There is one class that implements this interface and four other interfaces that extend it, corresponding to the five different kinds of types: The class Class, representing a primitive type or raw type The interface ParameterizedType, representing an application of a generic class or interface to parameter types, from which you can extract an array of the parameter types The interface TypeVariable, representing a type variable, from which you can extract the bounds on the type variable The interface GenericArrayType, representing an array, from which you can extract the array component type The interface WildcardType, representing a wildcard, from which you can extract a lower or upper bound on the wildcard
By performing a series of instance tests on each of these interfaces, you may determine which kind of type you have, and print or process the type; we will see an example of this shortly. Methods are available to return the superclass and superinterfaces of a class as types, and to access the generic type of a field, the argument types of a constructor, and the argument and result types of a method. You can also extract the type variables that stand for the formal parameters of a class or interface declaration, or of a generic method or constructor. The type for type variables takes a parameter, and is written TypeVariable<D>, where D represents the type of object that declared the type variable. Thus, the type variables of a class have type TypeVariable<Class<?>>, while the type variables of a generic method have type TypeVariable<Method>. Arguably, the type parameter is confusing and is not very helpful. Since it is responsible for the problem described in Section 6.6, Sun may remove it in the future. Example 7.5 uses these methods to print out all of the header information associated with a class. Here are two examples of its use: % java ReflectionDemo java.util.AbstractList class java.util.AbstractList<E> extends java.util.AbstractCollection<E> implements java.util.List<E> % java ReflectionDemo java.lang.Enum class java.lang.Enum<E extends java.lang.Enum<E>> implements java.lang.Comparable<E>,java.io.Serializable
Example 7-5. How to manipulate the type Type import java.util.*; import java.lang.reflect.*; import java.io.*; class ReflectionDemo { private final static PrintStream out = System.out; public static void printSuperclass(Type sup) { if (sup != null && !sup.equals(Object.class)) { out.print("extends "); printType(sup); out.println(); } } public static void printInterfaces(Type[] impls) { if (impls != null && impls.length > 0) { out.print("implements "); int i = 0; for (Type impl : impls) { if (i++ > 0) out.print(","); printType(impl); } out.println(); } } public static void printTypeParameters(TypeVariable<?>[] vars) { if (vars != null && vars.length > 0) { out.print("<"); int i = 0; for (TypeVariable<?> var : vars) { if (i++ > 0) out.print(","); out.print(var.getName()); printBounds(var.getBounds()); } out.print(">"); } } public static void printBounds(Type[] bounds) { if (bounds != null && bounds.length > 0 && !(bounds.length == 1 && bounds[0] == Object.class)) { out.print(" extends "); int i = 0; for (Type bound : bounds) { if (i++ > 0) out.print("&"); printType(bound); } } } public static void printParams(Type[] types) { if (types != null && types.length > 0) { out.print("<"); int i = 0; for (Type type : types) { if (i++ > 0) out.print(","); printType(type); } out.print(">"); } } public static void printType(Type type) { if (type instanceof Class) { Class<?> c = (Class)type; out.print(c.getName()); } else if (type instanceof ParameterizedType) { ParameterizedType p = (ParameterizedType)type; Class c = (Class)p.getRawType(); Type o = p.getOwnerType(); if (o != null) { printType(o); out.print("."); } out.print(c.getName()); printParams(p.getActualTypeArguments()); } else if (type instanceof TypeVariable<?>) { TypeVariable<?> v = (TypeVariable<?>)type; out.print(v.getName()); } else if (type instanceof GenericArrayType) { GenericArrayType a = (GenericArrayType)type; printType(a.getGenericComponentType()); out.print("[]"); } else if (type instanceof WildcardType) { WildcardType w = (WildcardType)type; Type[] upper = w.getUpperBounds(); Type[] lower = w.getLowerBounds(); if (upper.length == 1 && lower.length == 0) { out.print("? extends "); printType(upper[0]); } else if (upper.length == 0 && lower.length == 1) { out.print("? super "); printType(lower[0]); } else throw new AssertionError(); } } public static void printClass(Class c) { out.print("class "); out.print(c.getName()); printTypeParameters(c.getTypeParameters()); out.println(); printSuperclass(c.getGenericSuperclass()); printInterfaces(c.getGenericInterfaces()); } public static void main(String[] args) throws ClassNotFoundException { for (String name : args) { Class<?> c = Class.forName(name); printClass(c); } } }
|
The code in Example 7.5 is lengthy but straightforward. It contains methods to print every component of a class: its superclass, its interfaces, its fields, and its methods. The core of the code is the method printType, which uses a cascade of instance tests to classify a type according to the five cases above. Much of this code would be unnecessary if the Type interface had a toGenericString method. Sun is considering this change. |
