Question

Could you please explain why this code is not syntactically correct?

private void addEditor(final Class<? extends FieldEditor> fieldEditorClass, final Composite parent, final PropertyKey propertyKey, final String displayName){
    final Composite composite = new Composite(parent, SWT.NULL);
    composite.setLayout(new GridLayout());
    composite.setLayoutData(new GridData(GridData.HORIZONTAL_ALIGN_FILL | GridData.GRAB_HORIZONTAL));
    final FieldEditor fieldEditor = new >>fieldEditorClass<< (propertyKey.toString(), displayName, composite);
    initializeFieldEditor(fieldEditor);     
}

on line 5, the part between >> and << is underlined in red and it says “can not be resolved to a type”.

I hope you can see what I am trying to achieve here. By passing a SomeEditor.class to this method I then want to create an object of this class and initialise it. How can I fix the problem on line 5?

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Basically, I want to parametrise the concrete FieldEditor class being instantiated by this code. I have several methods in my code that are essentially identical, except that each instantiates a different class of FieldEditor.

Answer 1

fieldEditorClass is variable name not a class name. So you can’t call new fieldEditorClass (...) on it

You could try

 fieldEditorClass.getClass().getDeclaredConstructor(Class<?>... parameterTypes);

And then run newInstance(Object... initargs) on the gained constructor