Question

I need to get a property value from a property file and then pass it on to a superclass constructor. But since super(value); should be called first, where should I load the file and get the property value?

Answer 1

You need to load the properties file first, you can only do this in a static method. It sounds like you really need a factory method.

public static MyType fromProperties(String filename) {
     Properties prop = new Proeprties();
     prop.load(filename);
     return new MyType(prop.getProperty("name"));
}